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THE 



Franklin Speaker; 



CONSISTING OF 



DECLAMATIONS AND RECITATIONS. 



EDITED BY 



OREN ROOT, Jr., 

AND 

JOSIAH H. GILBER T 

WITH AN INTRODUCTION 

BY 

ANSON J. UPSON, D.D. 



NOV 24 188 



PI 



NEW YORK: 
TAINTOR BROTHERS, MERRILL & CO. 



o\ 



^ 



^''\^ 



Copyright, 1884, by 
Taintor Brothers, Merrill & Co. 



PREFACE. 



rriHE selections following have most of them been approved 
-^ by actual trial. They have been made brief, as effective 
oral expression can be better attained without overtax upon the 
memory of the speaker or the patience of the auditors. 

It has been the purpose of the compilers to make only such 
selections as will awaken interest and afford good opportunity for 
developing speaking power. 

The Appendix contains a list of words often mispronounced, 
also a pronouncing vocabulary of many of the proper nouns and 
adjectives used in this book. 

For permission to make extracts from their copyright works 
the compilers acknowledge, with thanks, their especial indebt- 
edness to Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Harper & Brothers, J. B. 
Lippincott & Co., S. C. Griggs & Co., and Lee, Shepard & Co. 

Hamilton College, September, 1884. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Aaeon Burr and John Q. Adams Hall 45 

Abraham Lincoln. No. 1 Fowler 159 

Abraham Lincoln. No. 2 Beming 161 

Address at Gettysburg Lincoln 259 

Address to the Romans Mazzini 122 

Agrtppina, the Great Empress De Vere 130 

Alex. Hamilton and Benj. Disraeli Parsons 229 

America's Relief to Starving Ireland Terry 165 

Appeal to Ireland Meagher 137 

Appeal to the Georgia Convention Stephens 218 

Appeal to the Romans Lytton 98 

Attack on Versailles, The Carlyle 153 

Avengers op Hypatia, The Kingsley 88 

Await the Issue Carlyle 141 

Babies, The. No. 1 Glemmens 146 

Babies, The. No. 2 Glemmens .. 147 

Battle of Lutzen, The Harper's Mag. 206 

Battle op Mission Ridge, The Taylor 36 

Battles Root 235 

Bay Billy Gassaway 99 

Bivouac op the Dead, The O'Hara 255 

Brag McMaster 71 

Brooklyn Bridge, The. No. 1 Hewitt 252 

Brooklyn Bridge, The. No. 2 Low 254 

Brougham's attack upon Canning 117 

Buddha's Victory Arnold 157 

Burial of Macaulay, The Punshon 28 

Character op Washington, The Vance 197 

Church and State Macaulay 112 

Civilization and Labor Roberts 265 

Close of the Battle op Waterloo Hugo 128 

Concord Curtis 43 

Conservatism Curtis 150 

Courtship of Larry O'Dee FinJc 237 

CuRRAN Oiles 10 

Curse of the Welsh King on the Saxons Lytton 107 

Dangers to American Institutions Root 209 

Dangers to our Republic Mann 116 



VI CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Death Terry 248 

Death of Garfield, The , Blaine 187 

Death Traps N. T. Herald.. 76 

Defense of Fitz-John Porter Porter 214 

Defense of the Union Armies Deming 50 

Deliverance of Leyden, The RicMrdson 260 

Destruction of the Orient, The 68 

Doom of Sal athiel Croly 133 

Douglas Monument, The Dix. 29 

Dream of One Condemned, The 162 

Edward Earl's Murder of His Wife 164 

Electoral Reform in England Curtis 207 

Empire of the West, The Burlingame. . . 151 

Execution of Montrose, The Aytoun 175 

Extreme Unction Lowell. 189 

Fanaticism Curtis 138 

Fat Man, The GUes 41 

Franco-Prussian War, The Curtis 240 

Genius and Labor Baker 38 

Genius of Washington Whipple 241 

Glass of Cold Water, A GougTi 31 

God in History Lanahan 140 

Great Britain and her American Colonies Bancroft 258 

Hamilton and Webster Root 39 

Heroism Depew 257 

Holland Wylic 96 

How TO Ask and Haye Lover 113 

How WE Kept the Day Carleton 125 

Human Littleness Be STwn 92 

Human Progress Punshon 132 

Humanity not Self-sufficient Be Shon 247 

Infidelity not Friendly to Freedom. . Phillips 47 

Influence of the Roman Pr^tor, The Pomeroy 168 

lo ViCTis Story 135 

Ireland Unconquered 114 

Is IT Worth While ? — Miller 63 

Jeanie Dean's Interview with Queen Caroline.. -Sco^^ 86 

Joan of Arc and the Bishop of Beauvais Be Quincy 119 

John Brown's Body Sherman 72 

Katie's Answer , 234 

Keenan's Charge Lathrop 169 

La Marseillaise Lamartine 231 

Lanty Leary Lover 49 

Last Appearance of Henry VI., The Kirk 228 



CONTENTS. Vll 

PAGE 

Last Day of Pompeii, The Lytton 225 

Lesson of the Hour, The Eobinson 54 

Liberty George 267 

Losses Brovm 91 

Loss of the Birkenhead. The Doyle 194 

Love of Knowledge Smith 58 

Macdonald's Charge at Wagram Headley 144 

March of Attila, The Harper's Mag. 59 

Massacre of Cherry Valley, The Seymour 23 

Millennium Not Yet, The Friswell. 216 

Men of Genius Longfellow 178 

Mexico and the United States Bushnelt 205 

Miller op Dee, The Ogden 19 

Model American Farmer, The Hoffman 17 

Mother's Jewels, The Trench 110 

Music in Battle Root 42 

Napoleon Bonaparte 67 

Napoleon III Stone 89 

National Greatness Coleridge 262 

National Institutions Stephens 79 

New England and New France Parhmxin 191 

News of Garfield's Assassination, The Ames 103 

New York Cleveland 264 

Nobility of Labor, Th:;: Beicey 61 

Old Hundred 105 

Oliver Cromwell Smith 148 

Only Twelve Left Gates 215 

Opinions Stronger than Armies Ostrander 14 

Oratorical Power Churchill 7 

Oratory of Wendell Phillips Beecher 268 

Oriskany Roberts 16 

Our Fallen Heroes Depew 22 

Penn's Monument Burdette 108 

Pennsylvania 75 

Pericles to the People Kellogg 219 

Petrified Fern, The Branch 223 

Plea in a Divorce Suit, A Hoicells 238 

Pleasant Days of Old, The Brown 121 

Power of Free Ideas, The Curtis 9 

Press and Providence, The Lanahan 179 

Principles Higher than Human Example Sumner 78 

Ramon Harte 12 

Religion Gives Inspiration to Art Storrs 94 

Religion and Science Terry 85 



Till CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Rescue, The 199 

Revolutions Macaulay 193 

Revolution of 1688, The Macaulay 154 

Rlde for Rescue, A Winthrop 226 

Ride op Collins Graves, The O'Beilly 201 

Russia's Problem Bewey 35 

San Bartholomew Davis 103 

Saratoga. No. 1 Seymour 242 

Saratoga. No. 2 Curtis 244 

School op the Gallows, The J^. Y, Tribune. 51 

Sea, The Swain 203 

Sense and Sentiment . . 232 

Ship on Fire, The Bateman 184 

Speech for Decoration -Day IngersoU 167 

Spinning Jackson 32 

Spirit op Inquiry, The Beltzlioover 142 

Study op Astronomy, The Mitchel 174 

Studies op Life, The Alger 74 

Success Longfellow. ... 95 

Suicide, The. No. 1 Harding 64 

Suicide, The. No. 2 Dickens 65 

Sunrise Ecerett 181 

Tidings op the Atlantic GougJi 222 

Time and Passion Raraee 196 

ToussAiNT L'Ouverture PhiUips 56 

True Glory Be Shan 27 

Twins, The Leigh 80 

Two Banners of America, The Johnson - 111 

Unconscious Influence Bushnell 156 

Victor op Marengo, The 182 

Vision of War, A Bdbell 81 

War LyUon 217 

What Philanthropy Owes to Christianity Bautel 246 

Webster in the Dartmouth College Case Goodrich 53 

Wendell Phillips. No. 1 Curtis 211 

Wendell Phillips. No. 2 Curtis 212 

What is a Minority ? Gough 124 

When the Cows come Home 24 

Where Should the Scholar Live ? '.Longfellow 221 

Who is the Richest Man ? Palfrey. . 69 

Winter Jerrold 83 

World's Indebtedness to Athens, The Macaulay. 172 

World's Stories, The 33 

Wreck of River:m:outH) The Whitiier 250 



AUTHORS 



PAGE 

Alger, Wm. Rounseville... 74 

Ames, Mary Clemmer 103 

Arnold, Edwln 157 

Aytoun, Wllliam E 175 

Baker, B. W 38 

Bancroft, George 258 

;^ATEMAN, Henry 184 

Beecher, H. W 268 

Beltzhoover, F. E 142 

Blaine, James G 187 

Branch, Mrs. Mary B 223 

Brown, Frances 91, 121 

burdette, robt. j 108 

Bdrlingame, Anson 151 

BusHNELL, Horace 156, 205 

Carleton, Will 125 

Carlyle, Thomas 153 

Churchill, J. Wesley 7 

Clemmens, Samuel L 146, 147 

Cleveland, Grover 264 

Coleridge, John D 262 

Croly, George 133 

Curtis, Geo. W.. . .9, 43, 138, 

150, 207, 211, 212, 240, 244 

Dautell, Edward W 246 

Davis, Mrs. T. T 102 

Deming, Henry C 50, 161 

Depew, Chauncey M 22, 257 

De Quincy, Thomas 119 

De Shon, W. H 27, 92, 247 



I PAGE 

Dewey, Fred. L 35 

Dewey, Orville 67 

Dickens, Charles 65 

Dix, John A 29 

DoBELL, Sydney 81 

Doyle, Sir Francis H 194 

Everett, Edward 181 

Fink, W. W 237 

Fowler, Charles H 159 

Friswell, J, H 216 

Gassaway, Frank H 99 

Gates, C 215 

George, Henry 267 

Giles, Henry 10, 41 

Goodrich, Samuel G 53 

GouGH, John B .31, 124, 222 

Hall, A. Oakey 45 

Harding, Rebecca 64 

Harper's Magazine 59, 206 

Harte, Bret 12 

Headley, Joel T 144 

Hewett, Abram S 252 

Hoffman, John T 17 

HowELLs, W. D 238 

Hugo, Victor 128 

Ingersoll, Robert 167 

Jackson, Mrs. H. F 32 

Jerrold, Douglas 83 

Johnson, Herrick Ill 

Kellogg, Eluah 219 



A UTHORS. 



PAGE 
KiNGSLEY, ChaHLES 88 

KiEK, J. F 228 

Lamartene, Alphoxse de... 231 

Lanahan, John 140, 179 

Lathrop, Geo. P 169 

Leigh, Henry S 80 

Lincoln, Abraham 259 

Longfellow, H. W.. .95, 178, 221 

Lover, Samuel 49, 113 

Low, Seth 254 

Lowell, James Russell 189 

Lytton, Edward Bulwer.. . 

98, 107, 225 

Lytton, Robert Bulwer 217 

Macaulay, T. B..112, 154, 172, 193 

McMaster, Humphrey 71 

Mann, Horace IIG 

Mazzini, G 122 

Meagher, Thomas F 137 

MnjLER, Joaquin 63 

MiTCHEL, 0. M 174 

New York Herald 76 

New York Tribune 51 

Ogden, Eya L 19 

O'Hara, Theodore 255 

O'Reilly, John Boyle 201 

ostrander, luther a 14 

Palfrey, S. H 69 

Parkman, Francis 191 

Parsons, H. H 229 

Phillips, Wendell. 56 



PAGE 

Phillips, Charles 47 

PoMEROY, John N 68 

Porter, Fitz-John 214 

PoNSHON, Wm. Morley.. .28, 132 

R-AMEE, Louise de la 196 

Richardson, Charles F 260 

Roberts, Ellis H 16, 265 

Robinson, Oscar D 54 

Root, Edwin B 89 

Root, Elihu 209 

Root, Oren, Jr 42, 235 

Scott, Sir Walter 86 

Seymour, Horatio 23, 242 

Sherman, J. D 72 

Smith, Goldwin 148 

Smith, Sydney 58 

Stephens, Alex. H. , . . . .79, 218 

Stone, Charles L 89 

Story. W. W 135 

Storrs, Richard S 94 

Sumner, Charles 78 

Swain, Charles 203 

Taylor, Benj. F 36 

Terry, Edward A... .85, 165, 248 

Trench, Richard C 110 

Vance, Zebulon B 197 

Vere, Schele de 130 

WiNTHROP, Theodore 226 

^Vhipple, Edwin P 241 

Whittier, John G 250 

Wylie, J. A 96 



1 



INTRODUOTION. 



THE practice of declamation in our schools has been regarded 
by many as harmful, and some teachers may still doubt its 
utility. But this practice, in my judgment, has many incidental, 
as well as elocutionary, advantages. 

Such recitations give self-control. They give self-possession to 
the speaker. He is thus familiarized, early in his life, with the 
presence of an audience. Before he is yet able to invent thought 
for himself, in the presence of others, he can at least exercise his 
memory in public ; and this gradually gives him freedom to think 
upon his feet, and to express his own thoughts in words. In 
this country, it is almost indispensable for most of those who 
desire to influence the public, that they should be able thus pub- 
licly to express themselves. 

By- this practice, a verbal memory is strengthened. And it is 
no small advantage to store the memory with passages from the 
best writers, or from those who, having not yet gained a wide 
reputation, have written what deserves to be remembered. Such 
passages, made familiar, have often influenced life and character 
most beneficially. John Quincy Adams said of himself, that his 
committal to memory of the verses of Collins — 

"How sleep the brave who sink to rest, 
By all their country's wishes blessed ! " 

excited in him patriotic feelings which perpetually influenced his 
I life. If, as has been said, the reading of Robinson Crusoe by 



Z INTR OD UCTION, 

the boys of England has made the English a nation of sailors, 
who can doubt that the frequent repetition in our schools of 
" Webster's reply to Hayne " has done much to perpetuate the 
American Union ? 

The style of many writers has been influenced, unconsciously, 
by the passages they have memorized in their school days. With- 
out conscious imitation, the grace and rhythm and vigor of the 
best writers have thus been imparted. The best characteristics 
of style have been acquired, without the exaggeration and some- 
times caricature that are produced by avowedly imitating a model. 
Graceful manners and address have been promoted also by this 
exercise. 

But as a means of elocutionary training, the practice of decla- 
mation is, in my judgment, beneficial. To read well is imdoubt- 
edly a most desirable accomplishment ; it is more : it is almost a 
necessity ; but to speak well is none the less desirable. And the 
young may well form habits of public speech before they are able 
to write their own speeches. Just as translation is useful in the 
early formation of style in writing, before the writer is able for 
himself to invent consecutive thought, so the public recitation of 
addresses written by others is useful in the formation of elocu- 
tionary habits. Declamation holds the same relation to elocution 
that translation does to style. And in reciting the productions 
of others, the art of vocal expression and action can be practiced 
independently. A good manner may thus be acquired by itself, 
for its own sake. 

And the practice of declaiming different styles of writing will 
greatly promote variety in delivery, if it will not altogether pre- 
vent monotony. 

The compilers of the following work have here collected so 



INTR OD UCTION. 3 

many varied exercises that any speaker who will use this book in 
his elocutionary practice, can hardly become monotonous. In 
this collection there is much variety, not only in the sul^jects, but 
in the style of expression and in the sentential structure ; which 
last, in my opinion, controls delivery. 

But, it may be asked, " Why add this new ' speaker ' to the 
great number already in use?" The old pieces have become 
threadbare. They no longer interest speakers or hearers. And, 
worse than this, the old pieces have been repeated so often, that 
in their delivery there can be little or no independent interpreta- 
tion. Every speaker will be likely to give simply a mechanical 
imitation of an established rendering. 

This collection has been made by gentlemen who know the 
Avants of our schools. They are familiar with the speakers 
already in use. They have spent much time and labor in making 
this new and excellent compilation. The collection has the fresh- 
ness and interest of modern topics and modern life. The articles 
are not only interesting to the reader, but remarkably well adapted 
to speaking. The book is evidently the work, not only of labo- 
rious care, but of discriminating taste, and is worthy of the high- 
est praise. 

Anson J. Upson. 
Auburn Theological Seminary, 
September 30, 1884, 



p 



INTRODUCTION. 



EXTRACTS. 



OWER above powers ! heavenly eloquence ! 
That with the strong rein of commanding words, 
Dost manage, guide, and master th' eminence 
Of men's affections, more than all their swords ! 
Shall we not offer to thy excellence 
The richest treasure that our Avit affords ? 

Samuel Danid. 



His words seemed oracles 
That pierced their bosoms ; and each man would turn 
And gaze in wonder on his neighbor's face, 
Tliat with the like dumb wonder answered him. 

You could have heard 
The beating of your pulses while he spoka. 

George Croly. 

The grand debate. 
The popular harangue, the tart reply, 
The logic, and the wisdom, and the wit, 
And the loud laugh — I long to know them all. 

WiUiam Coitper. 



INTR OD UCTION. 5 

Extemporaneous speaking is greatly assisted by a good habit 
of elocution, and it is at the same time strongly conducive to 
the formation of such a habit. The deliberate utterance which 
weighs every phrase, gives the mind time to revolve its ideas, 
and choose the most effective words for their expression ; and 
the evolution of a continuous train of thinking in coherent 
sentences compels deliberation and guarded delivery. 

Speaking from memory admits of the application of every 
possible element of effectiveness, rhetorical and elocutionary ; and 
in the delivery of a few great actors, the highest excellence in 
this art has been exemplified. But speaking from memory re- 
quires the most minute and careful study, as well as high elocu- 
tionary ability, to guard the speaker against a merely mechanical 
fluency and thoughtlessly rhythmical utterance. 

That this art should be so neglected in our systems of educa- 
tion is a reproach to the enlightenment of our age ; and it is 
especially a scandal to our universities, in Avhich the examples of 
the famous orators of antiquity, and the lessons of their experi- 
ence, are so fully known, yet practically dishonored. 

CJiambers' EncyclopcBdia. 



FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 



ORATOEICAL POWER. 

John W. Churchill. 

Assuming the possession of thought and feeling as original, 
inspiring power, and adding the power over voice and action as 
the instruments and media of thought and feeling, it is evident 
that the chief business of the speaker when actually confronting 
an audience is an affair of the soul. Training having done its 
best, the character of the speaker — his sincerity, sympathy, and 
uprightness — comes to the front. Fire must kindle fire. The 
truly effective speaker is the good man excited, with the power 
of communicating his excitement. As Emerson puts it, " The 
essential thing in speaking is heat, and heat comes of sincerity." 

A speaker who is in downright earnest cannot be a dull 
speaker. His mode of speaking is business-like. People see 
that he has an enthusiasm for truth ; that he speaks from his 
heart. Many speakers often repress earnest and honest feeling 
for fear of being accused of overdoing their speaking. They 
forget that it is the speaker's duty to express, not to repress. It 
is his business to communicate with power. Some speakers con- 
sciously cultivate a repressed style of delivery, and fondly think 
that it is "classical." As disciples of "culture" they aim to be 



8 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

calm and correct, and often succeed in realizing the description 
of the face of Tennyson's Maud : 

"Her cold and clear-cut face 
Faultily faultless, icily regular, sj^lendidly nuU." 

It must not be forgotten that there is an energy that is bom 
out of the mastery of strong feeling. A concentrated delivery is 
often the expression of a soul full of intensest feeling, but held 
under restraint. There is always an inward fire in such speak- 
ing, but the speaker retains his self-possession while allowing 
himself to be carried away. 

Sympathy, as well as sincerity, must be present in the char- 
acter of the speaker. His speaking must be permeated with the 
genial warmth and glow of a generous, unselfish heart, bent upon 
seeking the broad and common interests of philanthro'py. That 
was a true saying of a wise French preacher — "To address men 
well they must be loved much." Sincerity and sympathy are 
the conditions of influence over the audience. Men will not sur- 
render themselves to a speaker whom they believe to be deceiv- 
ing and misleading them. The orator's character gives character 
to his words. His words must throb with his sincere, honest, 
benevolent life. His rhetorical life then becomes identified with 
his daily life and is natural to him. 

We want power, life, and naturalness in delivery, and the aim 
of elocutionary culture is to give polished and well directed 
power. Power must have guidance, and art gives that guidance. 
I do not claim for my art that high rank which has been ascribed 
to it by some of its enthusiastic professors, as one of the Fine 
Arts, but I do claim that it is a fine art ; and it is all the finer 
because of its humble, but important function of helping us to 
use all other gifts and graces of mind and of character. 



THE POWER OF FREE IDEAS. 



THE POWER OF FREE IDEAS. 

George W. Curtis. 

The American Revolution was not the struggle of a class, but 
of a people. A two-penny tax on tea or paper was not the cause, 
it was only the occasion of the Revolution. The spirit which 
fought the desperate and disastrous battle on Long Island, was not 
a spirit which could be guided by the promise of sugar gratis. 
The chance of success was slight ; the penalty of failure was sure; 
but they believed in God ; they kissed wife and child, left them 
in His hand, and kept their powder dry. 

Then to Valley Forge, the valley of the shadow of death, with 
feet bleeding upon the sharp ground, with hunger, thirst, and cold 
dogging their steps ; Avith ghastly death waiting for them in the 
snow, they bore that faith in ideas which brought their fathers 
over a pitiless sea to a pitiless shore. Ideas were their food ; ideas 
were their coats and camp fires. They knew that their ranks were 
thin and raw, and the enemy trained and many ; but they knew 
also, that the only difficulty with the proverb that " God fights 
upon the side of the strongest," is, that it is not true. If you load 
your muskets with buUets only, the result is simply a question of 
numbers ; but one gun loaded with an idea is more fatal than the 
muskets of a whole regiment. A buUet kills a tyrant ; but an 
idea kills tyranny. 

What chance have a thousand men fighting for a sixpence a 
day, against a hundred fighting for hfe and liberty, for home and 
native land? In such hands the weapons themselves feel and 
think. And so the family firelocks and rusty swords, the horse- 
pistols and old scythes of our fathers thought terribly at Lexing- 
ton and Monmouth, at Saratoga and Eutaw Springs. The old 
Continental muskets thought out the whole Revolution. The 
English and Hessian arms were better and brighter than ours, but 
they were charged with saltpeter ; ours were loaded and rammed 
home with ideas. 



10 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

Why is it that of late j'ears there is a disposition to smile at 
the great faith of our fathers, to excuse it, to explain it away, or 
even to sneer at it as an abstraction or a ghttering generahty ? 
Have modem rhetoricians found something surer than moral prin- 
ciples? Have they discovered a force in politics subtler and 
more powerful than the Divine law? or a loftier object of human 
government than universal justice ? You may pluck the lightning 
harmless from the clouds, but there is no conductor for the divine 
rage of a people demanding its national rights. 

What are your spears, Xerxes ? what are your slings, proud 
Persian, with your two million soldiers sheeting the plains of 
Greece Math splendor and roaring, like the jubilant sea, along the 
Pass of Thermopylae? There stands Leonidas with his tliree hun- 
dred, rock-Kke ; and they beat you back with an idea. 

Bourbon of Xaples ! You may extinguish ^-Etna ; but the fire 
that bums in the Sicilian heart is immortal, inextinguishable. 

Yes ! it is an idea, invisible, abstract, but it has molded all 
human liistory, to this hour. Liberty is justified of her children. 
AMiom does the world at this moment fold to its heart ? AYho 
are held up before our eyes by Providence, like bullets plainly 
displayed before they are dropped into the barrel and shot home 
to the mark of God's purpose ? "VMio now Avalk through the world, 
each step giving life and liberty and hope to the people ? By the 
blessing of God, the contest has changed from the sword to the 
ballot ; and the hope of liberty secured by law, was never in the 
history of man so bright as it is to-day. 



CXJRRAN. 

Hexrt Giles. 

Among the mighty spirits wliich have been lights to Ireland, 
stands Curran, the glory of the Irish bar. Most exalted in his 
oratory, and most generous in his use of it, he was ever what the 
true man woidd wish to be — if his power enabled him — the de- 
fender of Hberty. 



CURB AN, 11 

How various is the eloquence in which that opulent spirit found 
expression ! It is wit, ready and exhaustless ; piercing as the 
pointed steel, or lambent as a ray of light ; now playful as a glee- 
ful child, and then mischievous as a merry friend. It is humor, 
in all queer analogies, in aU shapes of oddity, in all lights and 
hues of fantasy. It is sarcasm, which lashes its victim to despair. 
It is pathos, which wrings the heart ; which touches it in every 
nerve where agony is borne ; wliich searches it in every fold 
where the smallest drop of grief can lie concealed. It is denun- 
ciation. And here he is greatest of all. 

No matter who the wrong-doer is, let him tremble if Curran is 
to paint his deeds. Proud he may be in titles, boundless in 
wealth, hardened in the bronze of fashion ; if he is human, the 
orator's words shall transfix him ; wherever feeling has a sense, a 
barb shall rankle ; and for the time, at least, he shall stand before 
the world, naked, bleeding, shivering, and despised ; to his species 
a thing of scorn, and to himself a thing of shame. Office shall no 
more protect him than rank. 

Is he a judge, who sidlies the purity of the bench with the 
malice of a partisan ? His ermine shall not guard him from the 
advocate's indignation ; and the tribunal which he disgraces, shall, 
in its very loftiness, but make his ignominy the more conspicuous. 
Neither shall a villain find a shield in the baseness of his work or 
the obscurity of his condition. 

Curran lived in times wliich tried men's souls, and many souls 
there were which did not stand the trial. Some, with coward 
fear, sank before the storm of power; and others, with selfish 
pliancy, dissolved in the sunshine of patronage. But Curran was 
brave as he was incorruptible. He was upright, when honor was 
rebellion; he was true, when integrity was treason; he stood 
by the accused and the doomed, when to pity was to participate ; 
and he was loyal to liberty, when even to name her, was almost 
to die. 



12 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 



BAIION. 

Bret Hakte. 

Drunk and senseless in his place, 

Prone and sprawling on Ms face, 
More like brute than any man 
Alive or dead, — 

By his great pump out of gear, 

Lay the Peon engineer, 

"Waking only just to hear, 
Overhead, 

Angry tones that called his name, 

Oaths and cries of bitter blame — 
Woke to hear all this, and waking, turned and fled ! 

" To the man who'll bring to me," 

Cried Intendant Harry Lee, — 
Harry Lee, the Enghsh foreman of the mine, — 

" Bring the sot, alive or dead, 

I will give to liim," he said, 

" Fifteen hundred pesos do^vn. 

Just to set the rascal's crown 
Underneath this heel of mine : 
Since but death 

Deserves the man whose deed. 

Be it vice or want of heed, 

Stops the pumps that give us breath, — 

Stops the pumps that suck the death 
From the poisoned lower levels of the mine ! " 

- No one. answered, for a cry 
From the shaft rose up on high ; 
And shuffling, scrambling, tumbling from below, 
Came the miners each, the bolder 



RAMON. 13 

j Mounting on the weaker's shoulcler, 

\ Grappling, clinging to their hold, or 

i Letting go. 

As the weaker gasped and fell 

From the ladder to the well, — 

To the prisoned pit of hell 
Down below ! 

" To the man who sets them free," 

Cried the foreman, Harry Lee, — 
Harry Lee, the English foreman of the mine,— 

" Brings them out and sets them free, 

I will give that man," said he, 

" Twice that sum, who with a rope 

Face to face with Death shall cope. 

Let him come who dares to hope !" 

" Hold your peace ! " some one replied, 

Standing by the foreman's side ; 
" There has one already gone, whoe'er he be ! " 

Then they held their breath with awe. 

Pulling on the rope, and saw 

Fainting figures reappear. 

On the black rope swinging clear, 
Fastened by some skillful hand from below ; 

Till a score the level gained, 

And but one alone remained, — 

He the hero and the last. 

He whose skillful hand made fast 
The long line that brought them back to hope and cheer. 

Haggard, gasping, down dropped he 
At the feet of Harry Lee, — 
Harry Lee, the Enghsh foreman of the mine ; 



14 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

"I have come," he gasped, "to claim 
Both rewards. Senor, my name 

Is Ramon ! 
I'm the drunken engineer, — 
I'm the coward, Senor." — Here 
He fell over, by that sign 

Dead as stone ! 



OPINIONS STRONGER THAN ARMIES. 

L. A. OSTRANDER. 

Nations have armies in the plenitude of power, only when all 
their elements of strength have been boimd together by the force 
of a great idea. 

With the Israelites it was a theocracy ; with the Greeks, democ- 
racy ; with the Romans, liberty ; with America, freedom. Such 
an opinion, working silently among the masses for ages, at length 
bursts forth in storms of revolution, in whose tempestuous fury 
liberty is born ; in whose wild surges republics are cradled. A 
fiery despotism withers and burns and desolates Fmnce. Silently 
the people think. A little cloud appears in the horizon ; and 
anon, the wild tempest of '89 tears France as a tornado does the 
forest. Opinions are stronger than armies. 

AVhen force clashes with principle where is the victory ? The 
patriots of the Netherlands, fired by a love of liberty, throw off 
the yoke of Spanish tyranny ; they rush to the field of battle ; 
the iron Duke of Alva cuts them down by thousands ; again they 
unfold freedom's banners, and are scourged and scourged and 
scourged again. Years pass; the patriots raise another army; 
Spanish veterans annihilate it at a blow ! Surely armies are 
stronger than opinions. But wait — the patriots conquered ? No. 
God fights this battle. For three years they struggle on ; they 
tear down their dykes ; they rush with the fury of madness upon 



OPINIONS STRONGER THAN ARMIES. 15 

their besiegers ; beardless boys become heroes, timid girls become 
heroines ; daring, suffering all things, at length they triumph. 
Enlightened opinions are stronger than armies. 

Armies are red swords and brute force ; opinions are scepters 
of peace and intellectual power. Armies are war chariots ; opin- 
ions are locomotives. Armies are despotism, barbarism, darkness ; 
opinions are republics, civilization, light. Armies conquer by 
crushing ; opinions conquer by convincing. The power of armies 
is the power of the whirlwind, fearful, all-destructive ; the power 
of opinions is the power of the sunbeam, gentle, all-preserving. 
Armies are weaker than the laws which control them — weaker 
than the despots who use them ; opinions are stronger than all 
laws, creating or abolishing them at pleasure ; stronger than all 
despots, hurling them from their throne. Armies are the towers 
of. strength which men have built; opinions are the surging waves 
of the ocean which God has made, beating against those towers 
and crumbling them to dust. 

The dim light of the past reveals to us the forms of gigantic 
empires whose mighty armies seem omnipotent. A halo of mar- 
tial glory surrounds them ; then fades away ; their marble thrones 
crumble ; their iron limbs are broken ; their proud navies are 
sunk. To-day history, dipping its pencd in sunlight, records the 
sublime triumphs of opinions. The sword rounds the periods of 
the pen; the ballot wings the bullet; school-houses accompany 
cannon-balls ; and principles bombard forts and thunder from 
iron-clads. Glorious is the morning dawn! Science fringes the 
lands of darkness with a border of light ; and the sun of Cliris- 
tianity, glowing along the Eastern waters, arches the bow of 
promise above the golden Western hills. 

God grant that it may be no delusive dream ; that the rays of 
light, gleaming along the horizon, may be but the morning glory 
of an effulgent millennial day; that America shall conquer the 
world with ideas ; that senates shall become earth's battle fields ; 
that neSv constellations composed of brightest stars shall emblazon 



16 FRANKLIN SPEAKER, 

the victories of liberty ; that science and religion, powerful as the 
laws of gravitation, shall bind together the nations in one brother- 
hood ; that our banner shall float for evermore the proud standard 
of enlightened and Christian opinions. 



ORISKANY. 

Ellis H. Roberts. 

Persistent neglect of events which have molded history is not 
creditable to those who inherit the golden fruits. We do not 
blush to grow warm over the courage which at Platsea saved 
Greece forever from Persian invasion. Calm men praise the deter- 
mination which at Lepanto set limits to Turkish conquests in 
Europe. Waterloo is the favorite of rhetoric among English- 
speaking people. But history no less exalts the Spartan three 
hundred who died at Thermopylae, and poetry immortalizes the 
six hundred whose leader blundered at Balaklava. 

Signally negligent have the people of Central ]N'ew York been 
to the men and the deeds that on the soil we daily tread have con- 
trolled the tide of nations, and fashioned the channels of civiliza- 
tion. After a hundred years we begin to know what the invasion 
of St. Leger meant. A century lifts up Nicholas Herkimer, if 
not into a consummate general, to the plane of sturdy manliness 
and of unselfish, devoted patriotism, of a hero who knew how to 
fight and how to die. 

Oriskany the Indians interpret as the Place of Kettles. Out 
of that nettle danger Herkimer plucked for the Mohawk Valley, 
and through it for the Republic, the flower safety. In that Place 
of Nettles, Central New York may find much to stir it to deeper 
knowledge of its history and its relations, to greater anxiety to be 
just to those who have served it Avorthily, to keener appreciation 
of the continental elevation which nature has reared for us, and 
upon which we may build a structure more symmetrical and more 
beneficent than the Parthenon, a free State based on equal justice. 



THE MODEL AMERICAN FARMER. 17 

Names and deeds that live a hundred years, change hills and 
valleys into classic ground. The century which runs backward is 
only the dawn of those which look into the future. Central 
New York must have a worthy career before it to justify the 
traditions of the Long House of the Iroquois ; of the real states- 
manship of the League of the Six Nations and of the eloquence 
of their chief men; of the Jesuit missionaries and the Samuel 
Kirklands and the Lutheran clergymen who consecrated its waters 
and its soil and its trees; of those who saved it from French 
occupation; of those who kept out the Stuarts and drove out 
King George. 



THE MODEL AMERICAN FARMER. 

John T. Hoffman. 

The modern American farmer loves his calling and appreciates 
the good and beautiful things by which he is surrounded. The 
snow-clad fields of winter, the soft verdure of spring, the ripe 
wealth of summer, and the glory of the autumn, are as dear to 
him as they are familiar. The noise of running brooks and the 
dripping of the fertilizing rain are music to his ears ; the whisper- 
ings of the great trees of the forest are sweet to him ; his eye is 
trained to note the changeful phases of the sky, and his mind 
quick to interpret them. 

The hum of busy trade does not bewilder him, nor the glare of 
the distant city dazzle him. His heart is full of a comprehensive 
love of nature, and he is content to work on with her in her own 
calm and deliberate method of working. He is honest, patient, 
industrious, thrifty. Nature does not cheat him of just reward, 
nor does he shirk his share of duty in the universe. Every day 
imposes on him its daily labor ; but he knows that every season 
will vary his work, and so refresh and relieve him. 



18 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

The gifts which he receives from ^N'ature he is ready to mete 
out again with no niggard hand. He is cheerful, hospitable, 
kind-hearted. Friendly intercourse with his neighbors lightens 
liis toil, takes from the sharpness of temporary adversity, and 
adds to the pleasures of his prosperity. He has entire respect for 
his calling and for himself, and feels that he has full play in his 
occupation for brain and muscle, and need overwork neither, — 
although the mouths to be fed are too many, and the processes of 
Nature too slow to admit of indolence or waste. 

The buildings which shelter his family and those wliich protect 
the cattle that contribute to his support are in good repair and 
cleanly, without regard to ostentation. He is kind in his treat- 
ment of the dumb beasts that are his submissive servants, nor does 
he gTudge a little fruit or grain to the birds of the air that help 
him in his warfare with insects, and many of whom cheer^his life 
with their songs. He opens his eyes to the sunny side of life, 
and seeks not out its dark spots as an incentive to grumbling. 

If sickness or other misfortune befall a neighbor, he is ready 
with sympathy, with active aid, to the extent of his ability, and, 
in turn, he counts on his neighbor's help, should he need it. 

He is patriotic ; a firm friend of liberty, of order, of law. He glories 
in the grandeur and honor of his country, and is content to con- 
tribute, in his quiet life, to the general good, by making of liimself 
and of those about him good, honest, faithful men and women. 

He is religious. Living always in sight of the Creators 
beautiful works, his heart expands daily in thankfulness for the 
many pleasures which God has given to him free of cost, and he 
shows his gratitude in his daily life. Contented, yet desirous of 
improving his condition ; too proud of his independent lot to 
envy others who may be clothed in gaudier trappings, yet kindly 
to every man and submissive before God ; saving from a sense of 
duty and not from avarice; faithful and loving to his family; 
honest and frank in all his dealings ; thankful that so few temp- 
tations surround him, yet watchful against evil ; truckling to no 



THE MILLER OF DEE. 19 

man, yet scorning none ; not given to grumbling at the weather, 
but greeting cheerfully alike the sunshine and the rain ; earnest 
in his political duties ; a lover of nature, a lover of mankind, and 
a lover of God ; — there, my friends, you have my model of an 
American farmer. 



THE MILLER OF DEE. 

Eva L. Ogden. 

The moon was afloat. 

Like a golden boat 
On the sea-blue depths of the sky. 

When the miller of Dee, 

With his children three. 
On his fat, red horse, rode by. 

" Wliither away, miller of Dee 1 

Whither away so late ?" 
Asked the tollman old, with cough and sneeze, 

As he passed the big toll-gate. 

But the miller answered him never a word. 

Never a word spake he. 
He paid his toll, and he spurred his horse. 

And rode on with his children three. 

" He's afraid to tell ! " quoth the old tollman, 

" He's ashamed to tell ! " quoth he. 
" But I'll follow you up and find out where 

You are going, miller of Dee ! " 

The moon Avas afloat, 
Like a golden boat 
Nearing the shore of the sky. 



20 



FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 



When, with cough and wheeze, 
And hands on his knees, 
The old tollman passed by. 

" Whither away, tollman old ? 

Whither away so fast ?" 
Cried the milkmaid who stood at the farm-yard bars 

When the tollman old crept past. 

The tollman answered her never a word ; 

Never a word spake he. 
Scant breath had he at the best to chase 

After the miller of Dee. 

" He won't tell where ! " 

Said the milkmaid fair, 
" But ril find out !" cried she. 

And away from the farm, 

With her pail on her arm. 
She followed the miller of Dee. 

The parson stood in his cap and gown, 

Under the old oak tree. 
" And whither away with your pail of milk. 

My pretty milkmaid ?" said he ; 
But she hurried on with her brimming pail, 

And never a word spake she. 

" She won't tell where ! " the parson cried 

" It's my duty to know," said he. 
And he followed the maid who followed the man 

Who followed the miller of Dee. 



After the parson, came his wife, 
The sexton he came next. 

After the sexton the constable came. 
Troubled and sore perplext. 



THE MILLER OF DEE. 21 

After the constable, two ragged boys, 

To see what the fun would be ; 
And a little black dog, with only one eye, 
"Was the last of the nine who, with groan and sigh, 

Followed the miller of Dee. 

Night had anchored the moon, 
Not a moment too soon, 

Under the lee of the sky ; 
For the wind it blew, 
And the rain fell, too, 

And the river of Dee ran high. 

He forded the river, he climbed the hill, 

He and his children three ; 
But wherever he went they followed him still, 

That wicked miller of Dee ! 

Just as the clock struck the hour of twelve. 

The miller reached home again ; 
And when he dismounted and turned — behold! 
Those who had followed him over the wold 

Came up in the pouring rain. 

Splashed and spattered from head to foot, 

Muddy and wet and draggled, 
Over the hill and up to the mill, 

That wet company straggled. 

They all stopped short ; and then out spake 

The parson, and thus spake he : 
" What do you mean by your conduct to-night. 

You wretched miller of Dee V 



22 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

" I went for a ride, a nice cool ride, 

I and my children three ; 
For I took them along, as I always do," 

Answered the miller of Dee. 

" But you, my friends, I would like to know 

Why you followed me all the way? 
They looked at each other — " We were out for a walk, 

A nice cool walk ! " said they. 



OUR FALLEN HEROES. 

Chauncet M. Depew. 

The distinction of our volunteer army over all other armies of 
all times was its intelligence. Behind every musket was a think- 
ing man. On the march, around the camp fire, in the hospital 
and the prison, and in letters to friends at home, these men dis- 
cussed the issues at stake and the results that would follow defeat 
or victory, with as much statesmanship and prophetic foresight as 
their representatives in Congress. Of the million volunteer sol- 
diers, thousands were fitted by culture, ability, and character to 
be Presidents of the United States. 

Latour d'Auvergne was a grenadier of Xapoleon's Old Guard. 
Bravest of the brave on every battle field, he was tendered for 
distinguished services a sword bearing this inscription, " To the 
first grenadier of France;" but he refused it saying, "Among us 
soldiers there is neither first nor last." Constantly declining pro- 
motion, and ever winning fresh laurels, he fell fighting gloriously 
for his country, and an imperial decree gave him a distinction 
never enjoyed by the proudest marshal of the Empire. His name 
continued on the roll of his company, and when it was called, the 
oldest sergeant answered, "Died on the field of honor." And this 
year and the next, and for the next decade, and centuries after on 



OUR FALLEN HEROES. 23 

the anniversary of this Decoration Day, when the roll-call in every 
churchyard and village cemetery of the men who died in the con- 
flict is read, the answer of a grateful people will be, " Died upon 
the field of honor." 

There is an old epitaph in an English churchyard which 
quaintly says that " he who saves, loses ; he who spends, saves ; 
and he who gives away, takes it with him." These men gave 
away their lives, and took with them immortal glory and the grati- 
tude of endless generations. They may repose in unknown graves 
south of the Potomac, or sleep beneath the sea, and yet theirs is a 
deathless fame. Poetry and eloquence Mdll embalm their memo- 
ries, and keep ever bright the recollection of their heroic deeds. 

" They never fail who die 
In a great cause. The block may soak their gore ; 
Their heads may sodden in the sun, their limbs 
Be strung to city gates and castle walls ; 
But still their spirit walks abroad. Though years 
Elapse, and others share as dark a doom, 
They but augment the deep and sweeping thoughts 
Wliich overpower all others, and conduct 
The world at last to freedom." 



MASSACRE OF CHERRY VALLEY. 

IIOEATIO SETMOUB. 

A CENTURY has rolled away since men and women were mur- 
dered here because they held for their country's rights and free- 
dom, l^^ien another century shall have passed, and many changes 
have been made in all around us, and many questions which now 
excite us shall have faded out of men's memories, the story of 
this spot, of the Indians' yells of triumph, of women's shrieks of 
agony, and of brave men's silent struggles in death will live as 
clear in history as at this hour — so lasting are good men's brave 
I deeds, so fleeting are their lives. 



24 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 






The teachings of the grave have lifted men and nations 
lofty acts of duty and self-sacrifice. AVe meet here not so much 
to speak of the dead, as to let the dead speak to us, and thus toil I 
keep alive that love of country which made them suffer for its 
cause. We meet to get lessons of courage and patriotism which 
the tide of the world's concerns is apt to efface. And these lessons 
will sink deep into our minds when they are softened by the 
scenes and memories which cluster about this spot. It is right, 
then, that we honor the dead, and lift ourselves into higher and 
nobler frames of mind than those which grow out of the usual 
duties of life. I stand here to-day not only to show my reverence 
for the dead, but my gratitude to the living who have put up this 
memorial stone. 

A^^len tliis monument is unveiled, let us reverently uncover our 
heads and show that there is a response in our hearts to the sturdy 
patriotism of those who sleep beneath it ; that we are made strong 
by their grand faith amid trials and sufferings ; that the blood of 
innocent children, of wives and mothers and of brave men, was 
not shed in vain, and that a hundred years have added to the 
value of the costly sacrifice. 



WHEN THE COWS COME HOME. 

With klingle, klangle, klingle, 
Tar down the dusky dingle. 
The cows are coming home ; 
Kow sweet and clear, and faint and low, 
The airy tinklings come and go. 
Like chimings from a far-off tower 
Or patterings of an April shower 
That make the daisies grow ; 
Ko-ling, ko-lang, ko-lingle-lingle. 



WHEN THE COWS COME HOME, 25 

Far down the dark'ning dingle, 

The cows come slowly home ; 
And old-time friends, and twilight plays, 
And starry nights and sunny days. 
Come trooping up the misty ways. 

When the cows come home. 

With jingle, jangle, jingle. 

Soft tones that sweetly mingle, 

The cows are coming home ; 
Mai vine, and Pearl, and Florimel, 
De Kamp, Red Rose, and Gretchen Schell, 
Queen Bess, and Sylph, and Spangled Sue — 
Across the fields I hear her " loo-oo," 

And clang her silver bell ; 

Go-ling, go-lang, go-lingle-lingle, 

With faint, far sounds that mingle. 

The cows come slowly home ; 
And mother-song of long gone years, 
And baby joys and childish fears. 
And youthful hopes and youthful teai-s. 

When the cows come home. 

With ringle, rangle, ringle, ' 

By twos, and threes, and single, 

The cows are coming home ; 
Thro' violet air we see the town, 
And the Summer sun a-sliding down^ 
And the maple in the hazel glade 
Throws down the path a longer shade, 

And the hills are growing brown ; 

To-ring, to-rang, to-ringle-ringle. 

By threes, and fours, and single. 

The cows come slowly home ; 
The same sweet sound of wordless psalm, 

2 



26 FRANKLIN SPEAKER, 

The same sweet June-day rest and calm, 
The same sweet smell of buds and balm, 
When the cows come home. 

With tingle, tangle, tingle. 

Thro' fern and periwinkle. 

The cows are coming home ; 
A-loitering in the checkered stream. 
Where the sun-rays glance and gleam, 
Clarine, Peach-bloom, and Phoebe Phillis 
Stand knee-deep in the creamy lilies, 

In a drowsy dream ; 

To-link, to-lank, to-linkle-linkle 

O'er banks with buttercups a-twinkle. 

The cows come slowly home ; 
And up tliro' Memory's deep ravine 
Come the brook's old song and its old-time sheen, 
And the crescent of the silver Queen, 

AVhon the cows come home. 

With klingle, klangle, klingle. 

With " loo-oo," and " moo-oo," and jingle. 

The cows are coming home ; 
And over there on Merlin Hill, 
Sounds the plaintive cry of the whip-poor-will. 
And the dew-drops lie on the tangled vines, 
And over the poplars Venus shines. 

And over the silent mill. 

Ko-ling, ko-lang, ko-lingle-lingle, 

With ting-a-ling and .jingle, 

The cows come slowly home. 
Let doAVTi the bars ; let in the train 
Of long-gone songs, and flowers, and i-ain, 
For dear old times come back again, 

When the cows come home. 



TRUE GLOKF. 27 

TRUE GLORY. 

W. H. De Shon. 

The sky is black with storm clouds as the elements assemble to 
chant the death march of a conqueror. The hoarse, distant mur- 
murs fall upon his dying ears. He starts up with flashing eye 
and heaving breast, as with crash of thunder and the angry war 
of the distant seas, the march begins. As his delirious thoughts 
keep time to its majestic beats, he lives his life over ; and a barri- 
cade with a sea of rebellious faces behind, a charge, a fierce 
struggle, a victory, has rapidly passed before him. 

The rude wind, the fall of rain, the crackling and crashing of 
trees swell still louder the awful chorus ; and the long muttered 
" Tete cVarmee " escapes his quivering lips. The music sinks into 
a low dirge, and visions of a fair young bride, a loving wife, a 
divorce, a broken heart, fill his soul with conflicting emotions. 

And now earth, air, and sea unite in one grand refrain, and he 
is at AYaterloo. Again he looks in vain for Grouchy ; sees with 
blank dismay his cuirassiers sink into their living grave, and 
hears with despair the keynote of his destiny, "The guard 
recoils !" " The guard recoils !" 

The exhausted elements are lulled at last into a low sob ; and 
with the name of Josephine upon his lips, his soul passes into 
the moaning tempest. * * -x- -x- * -x- -x- 

The last beams of the setting sun fall upon the gray walls and 
ivy-crowned turrets of a convent, and flashing through an open 
casement light up with tremulous glory the face of a dying Sister 
of Charity. 

Her life of love, devotion, of perfect purity, is nearly ended ; no 
shadow of crime, no echoes of wrong harass her last moments. 
Her life ebbs so peacefully that the balmy air of evening, red- 
olent with perfume of flowers and thrilling with nature's vesper 
hymn stealing into the cell to mingle with her dying breath, 
lullabies her dreamless sleep long after her ears are deaf to its 
melody. 



28 FRANKLIN SPEAKER, 

Xo minute guns! no flags at half-mast, no nation in tears 
because she is dead ! Only the low sob of the organ ! the solemn 
chant of sorrowing sisters ! and perchance the tearful prayers of 
some whose pain she has soothed, whose sorrow she has cheered I 

Hers was an earthly mission and a heavenly reward; and the 
true glory of her life realizes its perfection, when her enraptured 
soul thrills with the praise of angels and the "well done" of the 
Infinite. 



BXTBIAL OF MACAITLAY. 

Wm. Morlet Ptsshon. 

If Macaulay had an ambition dearer than the rest, it was that 
he might lie in " that temple of silence and reconciliation where 
the enmities of twenty generations He buried;" and the walls of 
Westminster Abbey do enclose him " in their tender and solemn 
gloom." Not in ostentatious state, nor with the pomp of sorrow, 
but with hearty and mourning affection, did rank and talent, and 
office and authority, assemble to lay him in the grave. The paU 
was over the city on that drear January morning, and the cold, 
raw wind wailed mournfully, as if sighing forth the requiem of 
the great spirit that now was gone ; and amid saddened friends — 
some who had shared the sports of his childhood, some who had 
fought with him the battles of political hfe — amid warm admirers 
and generous foes, while the aisles rang with the cadences of 
solemn music, and here and there were sobs and pants of sorrow, 
they bore him to that quiet resting-place, where he " waits the 
adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body." 

Isot far from the place of his sepulture are the tablets of Gay 
and Rowe and Thomson and Garrick and Goldsmith; on his 
right sleeps Isaac Barrow, the ornament of his own Trinity 
College ; on his left, no clamor breaks the slumber of Samuel 
Johnson ; from a pedestal at the head of the grave, serene and 



THE DOUGLAS MONUMENT, 29 

thoughtful, Addison looks down ; the coffin, wliich was said to 
have been exposed at the time of the funeral, probably held all 
that was mortal of Richard Brinsley Sheridan; Campbell gazes 
pensively across the transept, as if he felt that the "pleasures of 
hope " were gone ; while from opposite sides, Shakspeare, the 
remembrancer of mortality, reminds us from liis open scroll that 
the " great globe itself, and all that it inhabit, shall dissolve, and, 
like the baseless fabric of a vision, leave not a rack behind ; " and 
Handel, comforting us in our night of weeping by the glad hope 
of immortality, seems to listen while they chant forth his own 
magnificent hymn, " His body is buried in peace, but his name 
liveth for evermore." 

There are strange thoughts and lasting lessons to be gathered 
in this old abbey, and by the side of this latest grave. From 
royal sarcophagus and carven shrine ; from the rustling of those 
fading banners which tell of the knights of the former time; yon- 
der where the Chathams and Mansfields repose ; here where the 
orators and poets lie, comes there not a voice to us of our frailty, 
borne into our hearts by the brotherhood of dust upon which our 
footsteps tread 1 

•* Earth's highest glory ends in — ' Here lie lies ! ' 
And * dust to dust ' concludes her noblest sonff." 



THE DOUGLAS MONUMENT. 

John A. Dix. 

In the changefulness of human things, the time may come 
when this monument may be brought do^\Ti to the level of that 
wliich is to be laid at its base to-day ; for families and races and 
governments and empires must, in the future as in the past, run 
their race and perish. But great actions, gTeat virtues, and great 
thoughts, emanations and attributes of the spiritual types of the 



30 FRANKLIN SPEAKER, 

immortality which is to come, shall live on, when all the monu- 
ments which men contrive and fashion and build up to perpetuate 
remembrance of themselves shall, like them, have crumbled into 
their primeval dust. 

One of the great poets of the Augustan era, more than 1900 
years, ago, boasted that his works should hve as long as the priest, 
with the silent virgin, should ascend the Capitolium. Of the 
millions of treasure lavished upon the decorations of the Capitol 
not a trace remains ; its very site was long disputed ; and priests 
and virgins, with the knowledge of the mysteries they celebrated, 
have been buried for more than a thousand years in the darkest 
oblivion ; but the immortal verse, in all its purity and grace, stdl 
lives and will make the name and genius of its author familiar 
until the records of human thought shall be obliterated and lost. 

Thus shall the name of him whose memory you are honoring be 
as imperishable as the State in whose service he hved and died, 
borne on its annals as one who was identified with its progress 
and improvements, who illustrated the policy and the social spirit 
of the great West, who gained strength and influence from its 
support and confidence, and who gloried in its energy and un, 
conquerable enterprise. 

Stephen A. Douglas will be remembered above all for those 
heroic words, the last he ever uttered, worthy to be graven on 
stone and treasured to the end of time in all patriotic hearts ; 
words which come to us, as we stand around his grave, ^vith a 
solemnity and a pathos which no language can express. 

When his wife bent over him as his spirit was departing and 
asked him if he had any thing to say to his children, forgetting 
himself, his domestic ties, every thing precious in life from wliich 
he was about to be severed, thinking only of his country rent by 
civil strife and overshadowed by impenetrable darkness, he re- 
pHed : " Tell them to obey the laws and support the Constitution 
of the Union." Are they not noble words, worthy the closing 
hour of an American statesman and patriot 1 



A GLASS OF COLD WATER, 31 

A GLASS OF COLD WATER. 

John B. Gough. 

Where is the liquor which God the Eternal brews for all His 
children 1 Not in the simmering still, over smoky fires choked 
with poisonous gases, and surrounded with the stench of sickening 
odors and rank corruptions, doth your Father in heaven prepare 
the precious essence of life, the pure cold water. But in the green 
glade and grassy dell, Avhere the red deer wanders, and the child 
loves to play ; there God brews it. And down, low down in the 
deepest valleys, where fountains murmur, and the rills sing ; and 
high upon the tall mountain tops, where the naked granite glitters 
like gold in the sim ; where the storm-cloud broods, and the 
thimder-storms crash; and away, far out on the wide, wild sea, 
where the hurricane howls music, and the big waves roar — the 
chorus sweeping the march of God : there He brews it— that 
beverage of life, the health-giving water. 

And everywhere it is a thing of beauty ; gleaming in the dew- 
drop ; singing in the summer rain ; shining in the ice gem, till 
the leaves all seem turned to living jewels ; spreading a golden 
veil over the setting sun, or a white gauze around the midnight 
moon. 

Sporting in the cataract ; sleeping in the glacier ; dancing in 
the hail shower ; folding its bright snow curtains softly about the 
wintry world; and waving the many-colored iris, that seraph's 
zone of the sky, whose warp is the rain drop of earth, whose woof 
is the sunbeam of heaven, all checkered over with celestial 
flowers, by the mystic hand of refraction. 

Still always it is beautiful, that life-giving water; no poison 
bubbles on its brink ; its foam brings not madness and murder ; 
no blood stains its liquid glass; pale widows and starving orphans 
weep no burning tears in its depths ; no drunken, shrieking 
ghost from the grave curses it in the words of eternal despair. 
Speak out, my friends, would you exchange it for the demon's 
drink, alcohol? 



32 FRANKLIN SPEAKER, 

SPINNING. 

Mrs. Helen Jackson. 

Like a blind spinner in the sun, 

I tread my days ; 
I know that all the threads will run 

Appointed ways ; 
I know each day will bring its task, 
And, being blind, no more I ask. 

I do not know the use or name 

Of that I spin ; 
I only know that some one came 

And laid within 
My hand the thread, and said, " Since you 
Are blind, but one thing you can do." 

Sometimes the threa'ds so rough and fast 

And tangled fly, 
I know wild storms are sweeping past, 

And fear that I 
Shall fall, but dare not try to find 
A safer place, since I am blind. 

I know not why, but I am sure 

That tint and place, 
In some great fabric to endure 

Past time and race, 
My threads will have ; so, from the first 
Though blind, I never felt accursed. 

I think perhaps this trust has sprung 

From one short word 
Said over me when I was young, — 



THE WORLD'S STORIES, 33 

So young, I heard 
It, knowing not that God's name signed 
My brow, and sealed me His, though blind- 
But whether this be seal or sign, 

Within, without. 
It matters not. The bond Divine 

I never doubt. 
I know He set me here, and still 
And glad and blind, I wait His will, — • 

But listen, listen, day by day, 

To hear their tread 
Who bear the finished web away. 

And cut the thread. 
And bring God's message in the sun, 
" Thou poor blind spinner, — work is done ! " 



THE WOKLD'S STORIES. 



EvEEY land has its story, a story peculiarly its own. Some- 
times real and terrible like the story of Sparta's death, sometimes 
vague and mythical like the legends of the North, but always 
characteristic of the land which tells it. I^ow, it is a story of 
brilliant achievements and conquests won ; now it is the record of 
fighting against hope, and of battle lost. 

Ask Egypt lying in the shadow of her former grandeur, for her 
story and she will tell you of her Pharaohs, and from out her 
grand ruins will point to her monuments and pyramids, emblems 
of her former greatness. Traverse the Mediterranean ; approach 
the classic shores of Greece ; the white Acropolis rises from the 



34 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

waves, and a Demosthenes holds spell-bound the Athenian throng. 
'Tis only the old story of Thermopylae, but how grandly typical 
of the Grecian spirit ; 'tis only the struggle of three hundred 
Spartans who lie in death, obedient to the Persian king, yet 
around it for centuries history and romance have been weaving 
the web of immortality until at last it stands the very ideal of 
heroism, and Thermopylae is Greece. 

As the ghost of Banquo rising throws a shadow over Macbeth's 
banquet, so the story of Napoleon casts a pall of blood and 
battle smoke over the sunny fields of France. The cloud rises at 
intervals when some great victory is won, only to close again 
round the scene blacker than before, amid the groans and the 
shrieks of the dying. 

Marengo and Austerlitz, Jena and Lodi, what are they but the 
burial-places of the noblest and best France ever saw? And 
Napoleon himself, a conqueror one day, a fugitive the next ; wor- 
shiped by the people to-day, cursed by the same throng to- 
morrow, is the very personification of French character, the 
emblem of French instability. 

There is a story, however, grander than all these. It is a story 
both of sorrow and of jo}', of inspiring patience, of great suffering, 
and which lives to-day, brighter and more glorious than it did 
eighteen centuries ago. It is the story of Palestine, the Holy 
Land. It was heralded by no waving banner or roaring can- 
nonry ; only a single star shone forth in the East, and the story 
had begun. It is a story known to all ; a story of labors, of trials, 
of patient forbearance, of long-suffering. The fearful night in 
Gethsemane, the trial, the death, the resurrection, the ascension — 
and the story is ended. 

Long after Egypt and Greece shall have passed into oblivion, 
after Germany and France are forgotten, after all the hosts of 
heroes and martyrs have moldered for ages, this story of Christ 
will be as new as when on Calvary the triumph over death was 
made complete. 



Russia's problem. 35 



BUSSIA'S PROBLEM. 

Fred. L. Dewey. 

Russia's problem is not the problem of the house of Romanoff, 
nor yet of the bureau aristocracy which administers affairs of state. 
It is the problem of a great people, feeling just now in this nine- 
teenth century the springing of national impulse and a desire for 
free institutions. While the Czar strives to avert its solution, 
nihilism is at work to hasten it. As in all reforms, it is fanaticism 
clashing with obstinacy. 

Russia's fanatic element, the small vanguard of the nihilists, 
proclaims only a negation of existing things. They may help 
to destroy ; they cannot rebuild. ISTot by systematic conspiracies 
and underground intrigues will the nation be saved. 

The obstinate are the autocracy. Like Carlyle, they see in 
Czardom a good element in Europe; its rule holds in peace and 
order anarchic peoples. The people will by and by prove that 
they cannot be held, and as well that they are not anarchic. 

Russia, in the solution of her problem, moves towards the 
threshold of liberty. Not by either absolutism or nihilism will 
she come before the sacred shrine. 

Thus far the Czar has pursued the fatal course of the English 
Stuarts ; he has granted reforms, but made the preservation of 
absolutism the condition of an advance. If he heed the lesson of 
history, he may become the champion of the people in the coming 
reform. If he refuse, the time will come Avhen the Russians, 
like the French under Louis Sixteenth, will be suddenly called 
into council. This will be the crowning phase in the solution of 
Russia's problem — the resurrection of nations is the miracle of 
our age. Armies, intrigues, and despots cannot arrest it. This 
doctrine of nationality has penetrated the masses of the Slav 
people. 

The history of the movement may be like the legend of the 
enchanted well in Irish story. 



3G FRANKLIN SPEAKER. ^^^1 

For centuries it lay shrouded in darkness in the midst of a 
beautiful city. One day some careless hand left ajar the door 
which closed it, and the bright sunlight flashed upon its waters. 
It arose responsive to the beam ; burst its barriers ; submerged 
the city ; and its mighty waves " making music to heaven " rolled 
over the temples and palaces of the past. 

Western civilization and Christianity are about and above 
Russia. Her people in their darkness have heard the tocsin of 
liberty. The genius of the Slav nationality is stirring from its 
lethargy. The germs of an active trust, that the will of the 
people is the basis of government, have found place in Russia. 
Some hand that means it not, perchance, will leave an open door ; 
and the uprising of a mighty people sweeping away the absolutism 
and the effete dogmas of the past, will solve the problem of Russia. 

There will come in this solution the freedom of popular govern- 
ment, the fullness of popular education, and the faith of intelligent 
Christianity. 



THE B.A.TTLE OP MISSION RIDGE. ^ 

B. F. Taylor. 

The brief November afternoon was half gone ; it was 3'et 
thundering on the left ; along the center all was still. At that 
very hour a fierce assault was made upon the enemy's right, near 
Rossville, four miles down toward the old field of Chickamauga. 
They carried the Ridge — Mission Ridge ! They strewed its sum- 
mit with rebel dead ; they held it. And all the while our lines 
were moving on ; they had burned through the woods and swept 
over the rough and rolling ground like a prairie fire. 

If the thunder of guns had been terrible, it was now growing 
sublime ; it was like the footfall of God on the ledges of cloud. 
It was rifles and musketry ; it was grape and canister ; it was 
shell and shrapnel. Mission Ridge was volcanic; a thousand 

^ By permission, from " Pictures of Life in Camp and Field." 




THE BATTLE OF MISSION RIDGE. 37 

torrents of red, poured over the brink and rushed together to its 
base. And our men were there halting for breath ! And still the 
sublime diapason rolled on ! Echoes that never waked before 
sounded out from height to height, and called from the far ranges 
of Waldron's Kidge to Lookout. As for Mission Ridge it had 
jarred to such music before ; it was the sounding-board of Chicka- 
mauga ; it was behind us then, to-day it frowns and flashes in our 
faces ; the old army of the Cumberland was there ; the old army 
of the Cumberland is here ! 

" Sound the charge ! " " Take the rifle-pits ! " was the order ; 
and they are as empty of rebels as the tomb of the prophets. Shall 
they sit down under the eaves of that dripping iron ? or shall 
they climb to the cloud of death above them, and pluck out its 
lightnings as they would straws from a sheaf of wheat 1 

Ten, fifteen, twenty minutes go by like a reluctant century. 
The batteries roll like a drum ; the hill sways up like a wall before 
them, but our brave mountaineers are clambering steadily on, up, 
upward still ! And what do those men follow ? Your heart gives 
a great bound when you think what it is — the regimental flag ! 
and glancing along the front, count fifteen of those colors that 
were borne at Pea Eidge, waved at Shiloh, glorified at Stone 
River, and riddled at Chickamauga. Nobler than Caesar's rent 
mantle are they all ! And up move the banners, now fluttering 
like a wounded bird, now faltering, now sinking out of sight. 
Three times the flag of one regiment goes do^vn. Three dead 
color-sergeants lie just there, but the flag is immortal. 

With magnificent bursts all along the line, as you have seen 
the crested seas leap up at the break-water, the advance surged 
over the crest, and, in a minute, those flags fluttered along the 
fringe where fifty rebel guns were kenneled. God bless the flag ! 
God saved the Union ! Let the struggle be kno^vn as the battle 
of Mission Ridge ; and when in calmer days, men make pilgrim- 
ages, and women smile again among the mountains of the Cum- 
berland, they will need no guide. Rust will have eaten the guns ; 



38 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

the graves of the heroes will have subsided like waves ; weary of 
their troubling, the soldier and his leader will have lain down to- 
gether ; but there, embossed upon the globe, Mission Ridge will 
stand its fitting monument forever. 



GENIUS AND liABOR. 

B. W. Baker. 

We have all felt the power of genius, have heard its angel 
voice amid the scenes of its own enchantment; have seen the 
pinnacles of its success towering heavenward, the crowning glory 
of earthly fame; and we have worshiped, almost idolized it. 
But whatever may be its apparent triumphs or its immediate re- 
sults, genius alone can never win ultimate success. If genius 
would be true to itself and win merited rewards, there must be 
labor to prepare and labor to execute ; there must be labor to 
work out the details, with genius to arrange, analyze, and com- 
bine them. 

Years ago an astronomer watched from the hills of Denmark the 
motions of the planets as they nightly rose and set, marking with 
nicest accuracy every change of position. When, after years of 
weary watching, the meager dotting of his mighty work had grown 
to a vast mass of recorded observation, death closed his labors, 
and his spirit followed the longing look of his lifetime to a home 
beyond the stars. Tycho Brahe's labor was accomplished, but it 
lay a bulky, useless mass, until Kepler tlirew upon it the light of 
his mighty genius, and thence evolved the laws of planetary 
motion. 

The union of genius and labor is no less necessary for true 
greatness in individual character. Genius is necessary to direct 
labor ; labor must furnish the materials upon which genius shall 
work. Genius elevates labor ; labor strengthens genius. Genius 
makes labor to glow with intellectual enthusiasm ; labor feeds the 
burning flame of genius. Genius brightens labor, upholding ever 



HAMILTON AND WEBSTER. 39 

brighter rewards and uplifting the soul by the longing for a better 
land ; labor stimulates genius by the glory of rewards already 
won. 

Napoleon, more than any other man in history, united in him- 
self the loftiest genius with the most unremitting toil ; and in his 
life exemplified the success which follows their union. Disciplined 
in the military schools, his genius curbed and controlled the law- 
less mobs of Paris ; inspired by his own brilliant conceptions, he 
led the array across the Alps, won glory upon the plains of Italy, 
and became consul. Winning the hearts of the army, he trampled 
on the liberties of the people and became emperor. Worshiped 
by France, he essayed the conquest of a continent. 

Baffled once, his undaunted genius planned again, and again 
his tireless energy crushed all that human effort could oppose. 
But there are bounds to the ambition of human genius ; there are 
limits to the success of human endeavors ; and on the field of 
Waterloo, God, in His providence, despite the genius and the 
labors of the " man of destiny," crushed once for all the daring 
projects of Napoleon. With all the fire of his genius, with all 
the strength of his toil, there was yet lacking the purer flame and 
the mightier strength of a godlike purpose. 

And so it must ever be. Genius is naught ; labor is naught ; 
genius and labor combined are naught, unless they are sanctified 
by a noble purpose. 



HAMILTON AND WEBSTER. 

Edwin B. Root. 

Alexander Hamilton and Daniel Webster stand in the per- 
spective of our national history as leaders at successive periods of 
kindred forces striving towards the same end. 

Webster was the younger prophet upon whom the mantle of 
Hamilton fell. Twenty years after Hamilton's death, just as 
Webster had established his place of leadership, the antagonistic 



40 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

forces in our government again joined issue. The evil which 
menaced the country was not unforeseen ; Hamilton had warned 
against it ; Webster had long dreaded its approach. State rights 
springing into life at the very birth of the Constitution was always 
the specter at the feast ; and now grown strong with years, it 
threatened our national life. 

When Colonel Hayne's adroit attack became known, it seemed 
as if the glorious work of Hamilton and Washington mUst be 
undone. To Webster the country looked to defend its national 
life. With a genius able to cope with the subtlest fallacy and fidl 
of his glorious theme, he nobly met the attack of Hayne, exposed 
the heresy of State rights, and sketched for future generations the 
broad national grounds upon which our Constitution rests. Nul- 
lification was crushed in our halls of legislation to rise again only 
by an appeal to arms. 

Alexander Hamilton was the suggester and advocate of the 
Constitution. As Secretary of the Treasury, he placed upon a 
sound basis the commercial interests of the country. As a Federal 
leader, he averted a war with England and thwarted the dangerous 
schemes of Burr. 

Daniel Webster crushed the doctrine of State rights in the 
Senate ; expounded the leading principles of constitutional law in 
the courts ; supported as a whig leader the financial doctrines of 
Hamilton ; and aided in postponing until the " fullness of time " 
the final issue between slavery and freedom. 

Hamilton and Webster belong to the formative state of our 
Constitution. They were needed in its times of trial, and did well 
their work. Their grand service Avas for a broad, deep, American 
nationality. When the final test between State rights and Na- 
tional unity came, signalled by the opening gun at Charleston, the 
thought of loyal America rested on the profound political wisdom 
and foresight of Hamilton ; the heart of loyal America uttered 
with a new thrill the familiar words of Webster : " Liberty and 
union, now and forever, one and inseparable ! " 



THE FAT MAN. 41 



THE FAT MAN. 

Henky Giles. 

There is something cordial in a fat man. Everybody likes 
him, and he likes everybody. Your Ishmaelites are, in truth, a 
bareboned race; a lank tribe they are, — all skeleton and bde. 
Food does a fat man good ; it clings to him ; it fructifies upon 
liim ; he swells nobly out, and fills a generous space in life. He 
is a living, walking minister of gratitude to the bounty of the earth 
and the fullness thereof ; an incarnate testimony against the vani- 
ties of care ; a radiant manifestation of the wisdom of good humor. 

A fat man, therefore, almost in virtue of being a fat man, is, 
per se, a popular man ; and commonly he deserves his popularity. 
In a crowded vehicle the fattest man will ever be the most ready 
to make room. Indeed, he seems half sorry for his size, lest it be 
in the way of others ; but others would not have him less than he 
is ; for his humanity is usually commensurate with bis bulk. A 
fat man has abundance of rich juices. The hinges of his system 
are well oiled ; the springs of his being are noiseless ; and so he 
goes on his way rejoicing, in full contentment and placidity. It 
is not thus with your thin people ; the disease of leanness has 
manifold discomforts. Their joints are dry; they creak, like 
rusty axles ; and from the want of due moisture, their tempers 
become as sharp as their bones. 

A fat man feels his position solid in the world ; he knows that 
his being is cognizable ; he knows that he has a marked place in 
the universe, and that he need take no extraordinary pains to 
advertise to mankind that he is among them; he knows that he is 
in no danger of being overlooked. 

Your thin man is uncertain, and therefore he is uneasy. He 
may vanish any hour into nothing ; already he is almost a shadow, 
and hence it is that he uses such laborious efforts to convince you 
of his existence ; to persuade you that he is actually something ; 
that he is more than a nonentity ; that he is a positive substance 



42 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

as well as his corpulent fellow-creature. To make tliis the more 
apparent, he tries with all his might to compensate the weakness 
of his step by the rapidity of his motions, and the feebleness of 
his voice by the solemn dignity of his utterance. 

But what a vain task is liis ! The fat man has only to appear, 
and the creature is absolutely lost in the ample obscurity of the 
fat man's shadow ; the fat man has only to speak, and he drowns 
the treble squeal of his fleshless brother in the depths of his bass, 
as the full swell of an organ overpowers the wliistle of a penny 
trumpet. 

The fat man has only to move, and it is as the tread of an ele- 
phant beside the skip of a grasshopper. A fat man is the nearest 
to that most perfect of figures, a mathematical sphere ; a thin man 
to that most limited of conceivable dimensions, a simple line. A 
fat 'man is a being of harmonious volume, and holds relations to 
the material universe in every direction ; a tliin man has nothing 
but length ; a thin man, m fact, is but the contintLation of a point. 
It really does take a deal of wrong to make one actually hate a 
fat man. 



MUSIC IN BATTLE. 

Orex Root, Jr. 

Not many years ago the vast allied armies of England, Sar- 
dinia, and France were encamped about the Russian fortress of 
Sebastopol. For days and weeks the dreaded guns of the be- 
siegers had been playing on the massive walls, until at last there 
were breaches in Redan and Malakoff. 

The French troops are marshaled for an assault, to charge into 
the breach and storm the tower. On, on they march almost 
to the walls, but the quick volleys from batteried cannon and 
infantry sweep away long lines of the column ; they waver and 
retire. Again and again they are led to the assault ; and as 
often do the fierce replies from beliind the shattered walls, hurl 



CONCORD. 43 

back the assailants with fearful carnage. And soon for the seventh 
time the men are rallied, and the officers, spurring along the ranks, 
strive to give courage for one final effort. But the lines hesi- 
tate : the impulse that has led them falters ; not all the French 
love of glory, or shame at defeat, not all the fierce excitement of 
the battle, can nerve them to pass those heaped corses of their 
comrades, to meet that storm of grape and canister and bullets. 

Suddenly from the mnks there arises the cry, " La Marseillaise, 
La Marseillaise. Give us La Marseillaise and victory ! " The Em- 
peror had forbidden to be played or sung the hymn of liberty and 
the revolution ; but as officers and men join in the shout, and it 
seems the last hope of triumph, the leaders yield. Aiid now the 
bands strike up the spirit-moving air ; and joining in the song, the 
soldiers with firmer tread and flashing eyes, moved by the same 
fierce impulse that had so often swept through the blood-stained 
streets and eddied around the barricades of Paris — quicker, faster, 
fiercer, shouting as they go, rush to the onset. Over the hundreds 
of the slain, through the deadly storm, into the breach, reckless, 
uncaring, driving the gunners from their posts, on they rush ; the 
tricolor waves aloft, and the impulse of La Marseillaise has won 
the Malakoff. 



CONCORD. 

George W. CtJRTis. 

It was a brilliant April night. The hills were already green. 
The early grain waved in the fields, and the air was sweet with 
blossoming orchards. Under the cloudless moon the soldiers 
marched silently, and Paul Revere rode swiftly, galloping through 
Medford and West Cambridge, rousing every house as he went, 
spurring for Lexington and Hancock and Adams. 

In the awakening houses lights flashed from window to window. 
Drums beat faintly far away, and on every side signal guns flashed 
and echoed. Stop the news ! Stop the sunrise ! The murmuring 



44 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

night trembled with the summons so earnestly expected, so 
dreaded, so desired. And as long ago the voice rang out at mid- 
night along the Syrian shore wailing that great Pan was dead, but 
in the same moment the choiring angels whispered, " Glory to 
God in the highest, for Christ is born," so if the stern alarm of 
that April night seemed to many a wistful and loyal heart to por- 
tend the tragical chance of war, it whispered to them with pro- 
phetic inspiration, " Good will to men ; America is born ! " 

All unconsciously every heart beat time to the music of the 
slave's epitaph in the graveyard that overhung the town : 

'* God wills us free ; man wills us slaves ; 
I will as God wills ; God's wiU be done. " 

Isaac Davis of Acton drew his sword, turned toward his company, 
and said, " I haven't a man that's afraid to go." As they came 
within ten or fifteen rods of the bridge, a shot was fired. A British 
volley followed, and Isaac Davis of Acton, making a way for his 
countrymen, like Arnold von Wiukelried at Sempach, fell dead, 
shot through the heart. By his side fell his friend and neighbor, 
Abner Hosmer, a youth of twenty-two. Seeing them fall. Major 
Buttrick turned to his men, and raising his hand, cried, "Fire, 
fellow-soldiers ! for God's sake, fiLre ! " John Buttrick gave the 
word. The cry ran along the line. The Americans fired. Then 
was heard the first gun of the Revolution. 

All that day and night the news was flying from mouth to 
mouth, from heart to heart, rousing every city and to^vn and 
solitary farm in the colonies; and before the last shot of the 
minute-men on the British retreat from Concord bridge was fired, 
the whole country was rising; Massachusetts, New England, 
America were closing around the city, and the siege of Boston and 
the war of American Independence had begun. 

Such was the opening of the first battle of the Revolution — a 
conflict whose magnificent results shine through the world as the 
beacon-light of free, popular government. And who won tliis 



AARON BURR AND J. Q. ADAMS. 45 

victory ? The minute-men and militia, who in the history of our 
English race have been always the vanguard of freedom. 

The minute-man of the Revolution — who was he ? He was the 
husband and father who left the plow in the furrow and the 
hammer on the bench, and kissing wife and children, marched 
to die, or to be free. He was the old, the middle-aged, and the 
young. He was Captain Miles, of Concord, who said that he 
went to battle as he went to church. He was Captain Davis, of 
Acton, who reproved his men for jesting on the march. 

He was Deacon Josiah Hajmes, of Sudbury, eighty years old, 
who marched with his company to the South Bridge at Concord, 
then joined in the hot pursuit to Lexington, and fell as gloriously 
as Warren at Bunker Hill. He was James Hayward, of Acton, 
twenty-two years old, foremost in the deadly race from Concord 
to Charlestown, who raised his piece at the same moment with a 
British soldier, each exclaiming — "You are a dead man." The 
Briton dropped, shot through the heart. James Hayward fell 
mortally wounded. "Father," he said, "I started with forty 
bullets, I have three left. I never did such a day's work before. 
Tell mother not to mourn too much ; and tell her whom I love 
more than my mother that I am not sorry I turned out." 

This was the minute-man of the Revolution, who carried a 
bayonet that thought, and whose gun, loaded with a principle, 
brought down not a man, but a system. 



AARON BURR AND JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

A. Oakey Hall. 

My boyish recollection is of an old man of stooping frame and 
eagle eye, moving moodily along the streets of our great metropolis 
— in the midst of crowds, and yet apart from all, surrounded by 
the busy hum, and yet absorbed in the solitude of his own soul, 
unshattered in intellect, yet with mind burdened by some hidden 
sorrow or remorse. 



46 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

His liad been an eventful life. One of the fathers of American 
divinity was his honored ancestor. Holy prayers had been breathed^B 
over his cradle, and had accompanied his youthful progress. The 
struggle for independence had given employment to his hope, his 
enthusiasm, and his energy. His country in peace sought to honor 
him who had honored it in war. There seemed no goal in life 
that he might not reach, no yearning for usefuhiess that coidd 
vainly enter his heart. mk 

But honor was absent from that souL He defied his origin, 
his mother's teachings, and his God, in outragiag decency and 
religion. He owned to no emidation, he consorted only with^B 
ambition. Euined in one project upon this continent, he essayed 
another project abroad. Banished from the soil of England as a 
dangerous adventurer, he fled to France, but to find he was an 
outcast there by the sovereign order. Cain-like, he was a wretched 
wanderer upon Wiq face of the earth. 

Retribution of eternity was not for him alone. There must be 
retribution upon earth — through years of suffering in foreign 
climes, beneath strange skies and surrounded by the distrust of 
sti-angers, through succeeding years of wretched isolation amid 
familiar scenes and surrounded by familiar faces. Mysterious 
death, with a mysterious fate, snatched away daughter and grand- 
child, and left him alone, the last of his race. 

So he died, parentless and childless, without brother, without 
sister, without friend. Xo stone marks his burial; but while 
Blennerhassett's isle shall render mournfully beautiful the roman- 
tic Ohio, the warniags of ambition in its most odious aspect shall 
preach the praises of true honor. 

There was another whose unshattered weapon of honor was as 
bright at the last of earth as when grasped lq youth. He too 
was of illustrious ancestry, and was watched by pious eyes. He 
endured losses and bereavements, suffered ignominy and reproach- 
But with ancestry glorified, with the pious ejes, revered, with 
revolutionary patriotism unsullied in his heart, with the hope, 



I 



INFIDELITY NOT FRIENDLY TO FREEDOM, 47 

energy, and honor of his boyhood untainted and unspotted, with 
the highest station in the land rendered more illustrious by his 
fulfillment of its trusts, this vindicator of every thing noble in 
humanity drew his last breath, as indeed he may be said to have 
drawn liis first, in the unselfish service of his country. 

His name may be mentioned. His relics will never grow cold 
or be dishonored. To the gi-ave of Quincy Adams tens of 
thousands of worshipers, among American youth of true, honor, 
may well make reverent pilgrimage. 



INFIDELITY NOT FRIENDLY TO FREEDOM. 

Phillips. 

I AM the more indignant at the designs of these infidels because 
they are sought to be concealed in the disguise of liberty. It is 
the duty of every real friend of liberty to tear the mask from the 
fiend who has usurped it. This is not our Western goddess, 
bearing the mountain freshness on her cheeks and scattering the 
valley's bounty from her hand, known by the lights that herald 
her fair presence, the peaceful virtues that attend her path, and 
the long blaze of glory that lingers in her train ; it is a demon, 
speaking fair indeed, tempting our faith with airy hopes and 
visionary Tealms, but even within the foldings of its mantle, 
hiding the bloody symbol of its purpose. 

Hear not its sophistry; guard your child against it; draw 
around your homes the consecrated circle which it dare not enter. 
You will find an amulet in religion. It is the great mound raised 
by the Almighty for the protection of humanity ; it stands be- 
tween you and the lava of human passions ; and oh, believe me, 
if you wait tamely by, while it is basely undermined, the fiery 
deluge will roU on, before which aU that you hold dear or vener- 
able or sacred will wither into ashes. Believe no one who tells 
you that the friends of freedom are now, or ever were, the enemies 



43 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

of religion. They know too well that rebellion against God can- 
not prove the basis of government for man ; and that the loftiest 
structure impiety can raise, is but the Babel monument of its 
impotence and its pride, mocking the builders with a moment's 
strength, and then covering them with inevitable confusion. 

Do you want an example ? Look to France. The microscopic 
vision of your rabble blasphemers has not sight enough to con- 
template the mighty minds which commenced her revolution. 
The wit, the sage, the orator, the hero, the whole family of 
genius, furnished forth their treasures and gave them nobly to 
the nation's exigence. 

They had great provocation ; they had a glorious cause ; they 
had all that human potency could give them ; but they relied 
too much upon their human potency. They abjured their God ; 
and as a natural consequence they murdered their king. They 
culled their polluted deities from the brothel; and the fall of the 
idol extinguished the flame of the altar. They crowded the 
scaffold with all their country held of genius or of virtue ; and 
when the peerage and the prelacy were exhausted, the mob exe- 
cutioner of to-day became the mob victim of to-morrow. 

No sex was spared; no age was respected; no suffering was 
pitied; and all this they did in the sacred name of liberty, 
though in the deluge of human blood they left not a mountain 
top for the ark of liberty to rest on. But Providence was 
neither dead nor sleeping. It mattered not that their impiety 
seemed to prosper ; that victory panted after their ensanguined 
banners ; that as their insatiate eagle soared against the sun, he 
seemed but to replume his wing and to renew his vision ; it was 
only for a moment. You see, at last, that, in the very banquet 
of their triumph, the Almighty's vengeance blazed upon the wall ; 
and the diadem fell from the brow of the idolater. 

I will not abjure the altar for the tinsel of a false and irrelig- 
ious philosophy. In the goodly "fellowship of the saints," in 
the " noble army of the martyrs," in the society of the great and 



LANTY LEART, 49 

good and wise of every nation, I will abide by the precepts, ad- 
mire the beauty, and revere the mysteries of religion. 



LANTY LEAKY. 

Samuel Lover. 

Lanty was in love, you see, 

With lovely, lively Rosie Carey, 
But her father can't agree. 

To give the girl to Lanty Leary. 
*' Up to fun, away we'll run," 

Says she. " My father's so conthrairy, 
Won't you follow me? won't you follow mel" 

" Faith, I will ! " says Lanty Leary. 

But her father died one day 

(I hear 'twas not from drinking wather) ; 
House and land and cash, they say. 

He left by will to Rose, his daughther ; 
House and land and cash to seize. 

Away she cut so light and airy : 
"Won't you follow mel won't you follow me?" 

" Faith, I will !" says Lanty Leary. 

Rose herself was taken bad. 

The fayver worse each day was growin'. 
"Lanty dear," says she, "'tis sad; 

To th' other world I'm surely goin' ; 
You can't survive my loss, I know, 

Not long remain in Tipperary : 
Won't you follow me? won't you follow me?" 

" Faith, I won't ! " says Lanty Leary 
3 



50 FRANKLIN SPEAKER, 



DEFENCE OF THE UNION ARMIES. 

Henry C. Deming. 

At the outset of the task of crushing the rehelHon, where was 
Missouri? Torn, tortured, and dismembered by a hand-to-hand 
strife between citizen and citizen ; her fields red with the blood 
of her sons by day ; her skies lurid with the conflagration of her 
dwellings by night. The great protecting arm of the government 
interfered between the warring brothers, and soon waved over 
them the olive-branch of peace. 

Maryland, the fairest of the Southern sisterhood while the 
family was one, where Avas she ? Hesitating, almost dropping into 
the arms of the greedy adulterer who had already hailed her as 
"My Maryland." K'ow she is torn from his grasp, and sits robed 
in white an honored member of our family board. Has nothing 
been done ? Why, in tliree years and a half we have done more 
than Julius Ccesar with his ten years in Gaid ; more than the 
conqueror of British India with his fifteen years in that country. 

I challenge you to find in all liistory a single martial enterprise 
more conspicuous for the obstacles to be overcome, more numerous 
in examples of endurance and heroism, more magnificent in its 
results, and more fatal to the enemy than that of opening the 
Mississippi. Was nothing done at Sebastopol? Then nothing 
was done at Yicksburg ! Was nothing done at Antwerp 1 Then 
notliing was done at Port Hudson ! 

We have won more substantial victories at the expense of ' 
fewer comparative reverses than in the memorable seven years 
which filled the world with the fame of Frederick the Great ; or 
in the three and a half of the campaign of Napoleon the First, 
from the time he descended the Alps like an avalanche on the 
plains of Lombardy until he turned his white charger in grim dis- J 
may from the crimsoned field of AVaterloo. 

Nothing been done ! Say, Sherman ! sweeping with thy 
besom the mountain fastnesses of northern Georgia, gathering 



j THE SCHOOL OF THE GALLOWS. 51 

'! into thy toils all the arteries of Rehel communication, and holding 
! in thy palm the arsenal of the Confederacy, has nothing been 
I done? Say, Grant! clearing that lurid war-path through the 
j wilderness at the bayonet's point, advancing thy lines from point 

to point, from the Rapidan to the James, and tightening thy 
j death-coil around Richmond, is the reproach "nothing's been 
i done " a fitting one to send back to the still bleeding though vic- 
j torious Sheridan 1 

j Read the reproach, if you dare, sons of ISTew York, over the 
I ashes of Corcoran and Wadsworth. Read it, sons of New Jersey, 
I over the grave of that most brilliant leader in the army, Philip 
I Kearney. Read it, sons of Connecticut, over the -tombs of Lyon 

and Sedgwick. Nothing done ! Passing through the enfilading 
j fire of Fort Jackson and St. Philip our naval armament on the 

Mississippi won a victory which pales not before Trafalgar ; under 
I the concentrated fire of two forts and one battery they won another 
I in Mobile Bay which pales not before the Nile. Alas ! Alas ! 
\ Nothing has been done. Hear it, Farragut ! in the maintop 

of the Hartford ! 



THE SCHOOL OF THE GALLOWS. 

New York Tribuke. 

A FEW days ago, a boy of sixteen who had quarreled with a 

friend, went off for a knife, and returning, stabbed his comrade to 

the heart. He was arrested, but upon being questioned about 

I the murder, refused to make any reply, " until," in his own words, 

"he had communicated with his counsel." 

Such discretion and judgment under the existing circumstances 
I are certainly rare in one so young and of such humble education ; 
j they denote a pleasing familiarity with the idea of murder among 
j the lower classes of our thoroughfares. The young Arab has as 
j little doubt about what is to be done in case of killing a man as 
I 



52 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

the Humane Society in case of suspended animation from drown- 
ing. 

" If I killed a man," is the common expression of the loaferish 
street-boy, " you wouldn't catch me so easy." The idea of murder 
as a possible incident in his life and of the chances of escape, are 
as familiar as the ways and means of embezzlement to a dishonest 
cashier. 

When De Quincy wrote of murder as a fine art his satire came 
fearfully near the truth. There is a literature of murder published 
daily and weekly, which is read with avidity by thousands. This 
it is which poisons the mind of the uneducated and makes crime 
to them a romance. Our long and dramatic murder trials are 
extremely attractive to the ignorant youth, and the culprit to them 
is always a hero whose exploits they study admiringly. 

Dick Turpin and Claude Duval are mere heroes of legend ; the 
Bowery boy is altogether too practical to think of imitating them. 
The more recent murders appeal to his emulous nature with a 
closer touch of kinship. Hounslow Heath is too far away to serve 
as the theater of any imaginary achievements ; but Reynolds who 
killed a policeman, Donahue who "laid out" another through 
mere jocularity, Carlton who robbed a Trust Company, and Fisk 
who stole a railroad — these are men of live clay with the budding 
ruffian of to-day. Their prowess he can imitate, their errors he 
can avoid. 

Two years ago these embryo animals gazed with eager admira- 
tion on the gorgeous equipages of Fisk. Xow things are changed, 
and their admiration is concentrated upon his slayer. For two 
years they have seen him engaged in a desperate duel with the 
laws of the land, and at last virtually victorious. Four years 
seems a very short time in the eyes of youth ; the jury is again 
re-instated in the eyes of the lawless as an obstructor 'of justice, 
and the curtain descends with an eff'ective ending to the play. 

The art of printing is not to be condemned because of these 
residts ; the graves of Faust and Gutenberg are not to be defiled 



i WEBSTER IN THE DARTMOUTH COLLEGE CASE. 53 

i 
t 

! because sensational papers are educating boys for the gallows; 

j but facts like these should remind every journalist that he wields 

' an enormous power, which perverted to the base use of gilding 

i that which is detestable, may work immense and endless ruin. 



WEBSTER IN THE DARTMOUTH COLLEGE- CASE. 

S. G. Goodrich. 

Mr. Webster entered upon his argument in the calm tone of 
easy and dignified conversation. His matter was so completely 
at his command that he scarcely looked at his brief, but went on 
for more than four hours with a statement so luminous, and a 
chain of reasoning so easy to be understood, and yet approaching 
so nearly to absolute demonstration, that he seemed to carry with 
him every man of his audience, without the slightest effort or 
uneasiness on either side. The argument ended, Mr. Webster 
stood for some moments silent before the court, while every eye 
was fixed intently upon him. At length, addressing Chief Justice 
Marshall, he said : 

" This, sir, is my case. It is the case, not merely of that 
humble institution, it is the case of every college in our land. I 
know it is one of the lesser lights in the literary horizon of our 
country. You may put it out ; but if you do, you must carry 
through your work ! You must extinguish, one after another, all 
those great lights of science, which, for more than a century, have 
thrown their radiance over the land ! It is, sir, as I have said, a 
small college, and yet there are those that love it."" 

Here the feelings which he had thus far succeeded in keeping 
down, broke forth. His lips quivered ; his firm cheeks trembled 
with emotion ; his eyes were filled with tears ; his voice choked, 
and he seemed struggling to the utmost, simply to gain the mastery 
over himself which might save him from an unmanly burst of 
feeling. 



54 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

The court-room during these two or three minutes presented an 
extraordinary spectacle. 

There was not one among the strong-minded men of that 
assembly who could think it unmanly to weep, when he saw 
standing before him the man who had made such an argument 
melted into the tenderness of a cliild. 

Mr. Webster having recovered his composure, and fixed his 
keen eye upon the Chief Justice, said, in that deep tone with- 
which he sometimes thrilled the heart of an audience : 

" Sir, I know not how others may feel (glancing at the oppo- 
nents of the college before him), but, for myself, when I see my 
alma mater surrounded, like Csesar in the senate house, by those 
who are reiterating stab upon stab, I would not for this right 
hand, have her turn to me and say, " et tu quoque mi fili ./-^and 
thou, too, my son ! " 

He sat down ; there was a death-like stillness throughout the 
room for some moments ; he had won his case. 



LESSON OF THE HOUR. 

0. D. Robinson. 

In the early days of Rome, according to an old Latin legend, a 
great chasm opened in the heart of the city, which could not be 
filled. When the oracle Avas consulted, the reply was given that 
the chasm would not be closed till the most precious thing in 
Rome had been cast in. Priceless jewels and costly gems were 
vainly sacrificed in the dark gulf, but it closed not. At last a 
noble youth asked his companions what more precious thing they 
had to offer than courage and patriotism. Then while they stood 
aghast, he, clad in full armor, mounted his horse, and leaped into 
the abyss. The chasm closed ; and on the very spot was estab- 
lished the Roman Forum, where, for many centuries, iustice was 
dispensed, and the interests of that mighty government trans- 
acted. 



LESSON OF THE HOUR. 55 

1 The legend carries its own moral with it. Once and again in 
i our own history has tne chasm opened, to close only when those 
most precious in the nation had followed the example of Marcus 
j Curtius. 

First, yawned the gulf of kingly oppression ; and Warren and 
j his compatriots led the van of heroic souls. That closed the 
I chasm ; and on its site we erected the temple of National Inde- 
i pendence. 

j Again, after many years, the dreadful gulf opened so wide and 

j 90 deep that it has passed into history by the name of the " bloody 

I chasm ; '" and when the call was made for the most precious to fill 

i the gap, willing victims came pouring forth from counting-house 

and printing-office, from farm and workshop, from school and 

I college. They leaped doAvn from the mountains of the North, 

and they came bounding over the prairies of the West, till two 

hundred and fifty thousand of the nation's chosen had plunged 

I in! 

But the chasm closed not ! A more costly victim was de- 
; manded, and was found only when the assassin's bullet had laid 
low the great Lincoln. Then the deep gulf of slavery closed; 
and above it we reared the Temple of Universal Liberty and 
Equal Rights ; and over its fair portals ^^e "wrote in golden letters : 
" Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punish- 
ment for crime, shall exist within the United States or in any 
place subject to their jurisdiction." 

But another chasm, in its evils second only to that of slavery, 
began to yawn, known as the " Spoils System " in politics, which 
threatened to engulf the honor and patriotism of the nation. 
Good men pleaded that the evil might be removed ; pious men 
prayed that the chasm might be closed without a victim. 

At our last national election, the people chose the foremost man 
in all our country to fill the Presidential chair. His whole life 
and teachings were opposed to this mighty evil ; yet by the hand of 
an assassin he has become its victim. Surely the most precious 



56 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

jewel of the nation has been cast in. And now, we ask, " Shall 
not the chavsm be closed?" 

We speak to those who are soon to assume the responsibilities 
of American citizenship— to all the young men in our land, who, 
to-day, by tens of thousands, with hushed hearts and uncovered 
heads, gaze into the open coffin of the martyred President. Will 
you not, like Hannibal, when he swore eternal hatred to the 
Romans, firmly resolve thcit you will use your whole influence to 
remove this gigantic evil? Then will the chasm be closed, and 
we shall rear upon the ground the Temple of an honest and 
honorable "Civil Service;" and Garfield will not have died in 
vain. 



TOUSSAINT L'OmTERTTJIlE. 

Wendell Phillips. 

When Bonaparte returned from Elba, and Louie XVIII sent 
an army against him, Bonaparte descended from his carriage, 
opened his coat to them and said : " Frenchmen, it is the Em- 
peror;" and they ranged themselves behind him, his soldiers 
shouting "Vive I'EmpereMr." 

That was in 1815. Twelve years before, Toussaint L'Ouver- 
ture, finding that four of his regiments had deserted and gone to 
Le Clerc, drew his sword, flung it to the ground, went across the 
field to them, folded his arms and said : " My children, can you 
point a bayonet at me?" The blacks feU on their knees, and 
asked pardon. 

It was against such a man that Bonaparte sent an array, giving 
to General Le Clerc, the husband of his beautiful sister Pauline, 
thirty thousand of his best troops with orders to re-introduce 
slavery. Mounting his horse and riding to the eastern end of the 
island, Saman the black looked out upon a scene such as no 
nation had ever seen before. Sixty ships of the line, crowded . 



TOUSSAINT l'OUVERTURE, 57 



' with the best troops of Europe, rounded the point. They were 

I soldiers who had never yet met with an equal ; whose tread, like 

I Caesar's, had shaken Europe, soldiers who had scaled the pjo-amids 

! and planted the French banner on the walls of Kome. 

I He looked a moment, counted the flotilla, and returning to the 

! hills he issued the only proclamation that bears his name and 

breathes vengeance : " My children, Erance comes to make us 

slaves. God gave us liberty; Erance has no right to take it 

i away. Burn the cities ; destroy the harvest ; tear up the roads 

I with cannon ; poison the weUs. Show the Erenchman the hell he 

came to inhabit ! " And he was obeyed. 

When the great WHliara of Orange saw Louis XIV cover Hol- 
land with his troops, he said, " Break down the dykes, give Hol- 
land back to the ocean;" and Europe said "Sublime!" When 
Alexander sav.'^ the armies of Erance descend like an avalanche on 
Russia, he said: "Burn Moscow; starve back the invaders;" — 
and Europe said " Sublime ! " 

Tlie black saw all Europe marshaled to crush him ; and he 
gave to his people the same heroic example of defense ; and 
Europe did not say " Sublime ! " ^\^en Toussaint was basely and 
treacherously betrayed into the hands of Erance, he was sent, by 
order of Napoleon, to the castle of St. Joux to a dungeon twelve 
feet by twenty. In winter, ice covered the floor ; in summer, it 
was damp and wet. In this tomb Toussaint was starved to 
death. 

Twelve years after, that imperial assassin was taken to his 
prison at St. Helena, planned for a tomb as he had planned that 
of Toussaint ; and there he spent his dying hours in pitiful com- 
plaint of curtains and tables and dishes and rides. God grant 
that when some future Plutarch shall weigh the great men of our 
epoch, the white against the black, he do not put the whining 
! child at St. Helena on the one scale and in the other the negro, 
I meeting death like a Roman without murmur in the solitude of 
I his icy dungeon. 



58 FRANKLIN SPEAKER, 



LOVE OF KNOWLEDGE. 

Sydney Smith. 

While I am descanting so minutely upon the conduct of the , 
the understanding and the best modes of acquiring knowledge, ' 
some men may be disposed to ask : " Why conduct my under- 
standing with so much care? and what is the use of so much '' 
knowledge?" What is the use of so much life? What are we to f 
do with the seventy years allotted to us ? and how are we to live 
them out to the last 1 I solemnly declare that, but for the love of 
knowledge, 1 should consider the life of the meanest liedger and 
ditcher as preferable to that of the greatest and wisest man here 
present ; for the fire of our minds is like the fire which the 
Persians burn in the mountains ; it flames night and day, and is 
immortal, not to be quenched. Upon something it must act and 
feed ; upon the pure spirit of knowledge or upon the foul dregs of 
polluting passions. 

Therefos-e, when I say, in conducting your understanding, 
love knowledge with a great love, with a vehement love, with 
a love coeval with life ; what do I say, but love innocence, 
love virtue, love purity of conduct, love that which, if you are 
rich and great, will sanctify the blind fortune that has made you 
so and make men call it justice — love that which, if you are poor, 
will make your poverty respectable and make the proudest feel it 
unjust to laugh at the meanness of your fortunes ; what do I say, 
but love that wliich will comfort you, adorn you, and never quit 
you, which will open to you the kingdom of thought and all the 
boundless regions of conception, as an asylum against the cruelty, 
tlie injustice, and the pain that may be your lot in the outer 
world, that which will make your motives great and honorable, 
and light up in an instant a thousand noble disdains at the very 
thought of meanness and of fraud? 

Therefore, if any young man has embarked his life in pursuit 
of knowledge, let him go on without doubting or fearing the event; 



jj THE MARCH OF ATTILA. 59 

! let him not be intimidated by the cheerless beginnings of knowl- 
! edge, by the darkness from which she springs, by the difficulties 
' which hover around her, by the want and sorrow which sometimes 
j journey in her train ; but let him ever follow her as the angel that 
guards him, as the genius of his life. She will bring him out at 
last into the light of day, and exhibit him to the world, com- 
1 prehensive in acquirements, fertile in resources, rich in imagination, 
I strong in reasoning, prudent and powerful above his fellows in all 
i the relations and in all the offices of life. 



THE MARCH OF ATTILA. 

Harper's Magazike. 

There was once on the staff of the great Frederic, a musician 
I named Klepman, who had conceived the idea of immortalizing his 
j name by composing an opera founded on the life and exploits of 
Attila, King of the Huns. The opera had progressed until the 
point was reached at which a march must be introduced — a march 
whose grandeur and magnificence should quicken to fever-heat the 
pulses of the blood — a mad, swift, swinging march of flame and 
thunder — the battle-march of Attila the Scourge. 

Months flew by until they grew into years, and yet the musician 

was only humming the tune that had timed the tramp of thousands, 

ages before. He heard, he felt the fierce whirlwind of melody, but 

it forever eluded his grasp. At night his feverish dreams were 

often disturbed by its clang of victory, and springing up he would 

cry : " Lights ! Lights ! It is the march of Attila the Scourge !" 

But, alas ! silence only reigned throughout the portals of his 

brain. 

j The army was stationed at Hochkirchen. It was the eve of 

i that eventful night so long remembered in Prussian story. An 

j hour after midnight the king was awakened by a succession of 



60 FRANKLIX SPEAKER. 

slirill, piercing noises which rapidly subsided into a heavy rumbKng 
sound. Springing to his feet he rushed to the open portal. In- 
stantly the sky was one vast flood of blinding light, and the next 
moment there succeeded volleys of rattling, crashing thunder. 
Then there came a lull in the storm, broken only by the same 
rumbling sounds he had heard at first. "The elements are gather- 
ing their forces for a new attack," he murmured; but his soliloquy 
was cut short by a new sensation. Shrieks, the very echoes of 
those that had aroused him from slumber, proceeded from the 
adjoining apartment ; then, as if driven back by supernal powers, 
they retreated, grew fainter and fainter, imtH as hollow, pent-up 
sounds, they died away in the recesses of a sepulchre. 

It was the harpsichord of Klepman. The king Kstened with 
bated breath, lest he might disturb the composer's weird rehearsal. 
Again the chords broke forth anew ; then swooned away in agony 
and terror, only to rise again in heroic, stately measures, swelling 
louder and louder, proudly and defiantly filling aU the chapel with 
wild notes that rang high among the vaulted arches. 

At times the treble pierced the air, thin and shrill as the cry of 
a wounded vulture ; then surging away, the deep bass in one grand 
effort, burst in a shower of sounds rude, harsh, discordant, as 
though the very spirit of the tempest had swept the keys. Yet 
above all was ever heard the stately, measured tramp, tramp of 
victory. The storm without awoke with renewed fury, and the 
artillery of heaven booms sullenly above them; but the king 
heeded not now the jarring elemental strife ; for his soul had 
wandered backward to past ages, and was before the gates of Kome 
with the conquering Huns in the vanguard of Attila. 

It was a moment of supreme triumph for king and composer. 
But, alas ! how fleeting ! That night amidst the horrors of the 
tempest, the flower of the Austrian cavalry came down on Hoch- 
kirchen. There was no bugle blast and the clatter of the charge 
mingled with the roar of the tempest. Then amid its raging came 
the clangor of conflict, the ring of arms, cries of alarm, and shrieks 



THE NOBILITY OF LABOR. 61 

of anguish. But neither Frederic nor Klepman heard them. 
The fancied sweep of Attila's victorious legions drowned the hoof- 
beats of the Austrian cavalry. The music filled the ears and 
hearts of both with its wild march time, and the swift-coming 
danger of the present was lost in the ideal terrors which music 
summoned from the past. 

It was only with the tramp of these victorious squadrons at the 
very door that Frederic aroused himself. " Klepman ! Klep- 
man!" he shouted. " The Austrians ! Fly! for your life, fly ! " 
But Klepman heard not, heeded not. "Lights! Lights!" he 
cried as of old, rushing to the door. " Lights ! It is the march 
of Attila the Scourge ! " 

A crashing volley was the answer, and Klepman fell. He had 
learned the lesson of his life in the hour of his death. 



THE NOBILITY OF LABOR. 

O. Dewey. 

Why, in the great scale of things, is labor ordained for us? 
Easily, had it so pleased the great Ordainer, might it have been 
dispensed with. The world itself might have been a mighty 
machinery for producing aU that man wants. Houses might have 
risen like an exhalation — 

"With the sound 
Of dulcet symphonies, and voices sweet, 
BuHt like a temple." 

Gorgeous furniture might have been placed in them, and soft 
couches and luxurious banquets spread by hands unseen ; and man, 
clothed with fabrics of nature's weaving rather than with imperial 
purple, might h?ve been sent to disport himself in those Elysian 
palaces. 



62 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

But where had been human energy, perseverance, patience, 
virtue, heroism 1 Cut off labor with one blow from the world, 
and mankind had sunk to a crowd of Asiatic voluptuaries. 

Better that the earth be given to man as a dark mass, where- 
upon to labor. Better that rude and unsightly materials be pro- 
vided in the ore bed, and in the forest, for him to fashion in 
splendor aud beauty. Better, not because of that splendor and 
beauty, but because the act of creating them is better than the 
things themselves ; because exertion is nobler than enjojTuent ; 
because the laborer is greater and more worthy of honor than the 
idler. 

Labor is Heaven's great ordinance for human improvement. 
Let not the great ordinance be broken down. "What do I say ? 
It is broken down ; and it has been broken down for ages. Let 
it, then, be built again; here, if anywhere, on the shores of a 
new world, of a new civilization. 

But how, it may be asked, is it broken down 1 Do not men 
toil 1 it may be said. They do, indeed, toil ; but they too gener- 
ally do because they must. Many submit to it, as in some sort a 
degrading necessity ; and they desire nothing so much on earth as 
an escape from it. This way of thinking is the heritage of the 
absurd and unjust feudal system, under wliich serfs labored, and 
gentlemen spent their lives in fighting and feasting. It is time 
that this opprobrium of toil were done away. 

Ashamed to toil ! Ashamed of thy dingy workshop and dusty 
labor field ; of thy hard hand, scarred with service more honorable 
than that of war ; of thy soiled and weather-stained garments, on 
which mother nature has embroidered mist, sun and rain, fire and 
steam — her oa\ti heraldic honors ! Ashamed of those tokens and 
titles, and envious of the flaunting robes of imbecile idleness and 
vanity ! It is treason to nature — it is impiety to Heaven — it is 
breaking Heaven's great ordinance ! Toil, toil, either of the brain, 
of the heart, or of the hand, is the only true manhood, the only 
true nobility ! 



IS IT WORTH WHILE? 63 



IS IT WORTH WHILE P 

Joaquin Miller. 

Is it worth while that we jostle a brother 
Bearing his load on the rough road of life 1 

Is it worth while that we jeer at each other 

In blackness of heart 1 that we war to the knife % 
God pity us all in our pitiful strife. 

God pity us all as we jostle each other ; 

God pardon us aU for the triumph we feel 
When a fellow goes down 'neath his load on the heather, 

Pierced to the heart ; words are keener than steel, 

And mightier far for woe than for weal. 

"Were it not well, in this brief little journey. 
On over the isthmus, down into the tide, 

We give him a fish, instead of a serpent. 
Ere folding the hands to be and abide 
Forever and aye in the dust at his side % 

Look at the roses saluting each other ; 

Look at the herds all at peace on the plain ; 

Man and man only, makes war on his brother, 
And laughs in his heart at his peril and pain. 
Shamed by the beasts that go down on the plain. 

Is it worth while that we battle to humble 
Some poor fellow-creature down in the dusf? 

God pity us all ! Time eftsoons will tumble 
All of us together, like leaves in a gust. 
Humbled, indeed, down into the dust. 



64 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

THE SUICIDE. 
No. 1. 

Eebecca Harding tells of one who, falsely condemned and 
sentenced, for shame ended a hard-spent life. 

He sat on the low pallet thinking. The evening was darken- 
ing fast. The rumble of the carts grew infrequent. He strained 
his eyes to catch a glimpse of each passer-by, wondering who they 
were, what kind of homes they were going to, if they had children, 
listening eagerly to every chance word in the street as if — God be 
merciful to the man ! what strange fancy is this — as if he never 
should hear human voices again. 

It was quite dark at last. He lay on the pallet holding the bit 
of tin, which he had rasped to a tolerable degree of sharpness, in 
his hand, to play with, it may be. He bared his arms, looking at 
their corded veins and sinews. Then there was the slight, click- 
ing, bubbling sound of imprisoned blood set free. 

He lay quite still, his arm outstretched, looking at the pearly 
stream of moonlight coming into the window. I think in that 
one hour, he lived back over all the years that had gone before. I 
think that all the low, vile life, all his wrongs, all liis starved 
hopes came then and stung him with a farewell poison that made 
him sick unto death. He made neither moan nor cry ; only 
turned his worn face now and then to the pure light that seemed 
so far off. 

The hour was over at last. The moon slowly came nearer and 
threw the light across his feet. He watched it steadily as it crept 
up, inch by inch, slowly. It seemed to him to carry a great 
silence. He had been so hot and tired ; the years had been so 
fierce and cruel ; now were coming quiet and coolness and sleep. 

His tense limlis relaxed ; the blood ran fainter and slower from 
liis heart. He did not think now with a savage anger of what 
might be and was not ; he was conscious only of deep stillness 



THE SUICIDE. * 65 

creeping over him. At first he saw a sea of faces, the mill men — 
women he had known, drunken and bloated; then they jQoated 
together like a mist and faded away, leaving only the clear, pearly 
moonlight. 

Whether, as the pure light crept up the stretched-out figure, it 
brought with it calm and peace, who shall say % His dumb soul 
was alone with God in judgment. A voice may have spoken for 
it from far-off Calvary, " Father, forgive them, for they know not 
what they do ! " Who dare say ? 

Fainter and fainter the heart rose and fell ; slower and slower 
the moon floated from behind a cloud, until, when at last its full 
tide of white splendor swept over the cell, it seemed to wrap and 
fold into a deeper stillness the dead figure that never should 
move again. Silence deeper than night. 



THE SUICIDE. 

Kg. 2. 

The story I am to tell is of one who had lived for years a 
life of crime and lust, and in this life was growing old and weak. 
At last one bitter night, as Dickens tells the story, the old con- 
vict sank down on the door-step faint and ill. The decay of vice 
and profligacy had worn him to the bone. His cheeks were hol- 
low and livid, his eyes were sunken, and their sight was dim. 

And now the long-forgotten scenes of a misspent life crowded 
thick and fast upon him. He thought of the time when he had a 
home — a happy, cheerful home — and of those who peopled it, 
until the forms of his children seemed to stand about him; so 
plain, so clear, and so distinct were they that he could touch and 
feel them. Looks that were long-forgotten were fixed upon him 
once more ; voices long since hushed in death sounded in his ears 
like the music of village bells. 

But it was only for an instant. The rain beat heavily upon 
him, and cold and hunger were gnawing at his heart again. Sud- 



66 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

denly he started up in the extremity of terror. He had heard his 
own voice shouting in the night — he knew not what or why. 
Hark ! a groan ! another ! His senses were leaving him. Half- 
formed and incoherent words burst from his lips, and liis hands 
sought to tear and lacerate his flesh. He w^as going mad, and he 
shrieked for help till his own voice failed him. 

At length he raised his head and looked up the long dismal 
street. In an instant his resolve was taken. His limbs received 
new life. He ran quickly from the spot and paused not for 
breath until he reached the other side. The tide was in, and the 
water flowed at his feet. The rain had ceased — the wind was 
lulled and all w{^s still and quiet — so quiet that the faintest sound 
on the opposite bank — even the rippling of the water against the 
barges that were moored there, was distinctly audible to his ear. 

The stream stole languidly and sluggislily on. Strange and 
fantastic shapes rose to the surface and beckoned him to approach. 
Dark, glowing eyes peered at him from the water and seemed to 
mock his hesitation, while hollow murmurs from behind urged 
him onward. He retreated a few paces, took a short run, a 
desperate leap, and plunged into the water. 

Not five seconds had passed when he rose to the water's surface. 
But what a change had taken place in that short time in all his 
thoughts and feelings. Life ! Life ! in any form. Poverty, misery, 
starvation, any thing but death ! He fought and struggled with the 
water that closed over his head, and screamed in agonies of terror. 

The shore ! — but one foot of dry ground ! He could almost 
touch the step. One hand-breadth nearer and he would be 
saved ; but the tide bore him onward under the dark arches of 
the bridge, and he sank to the bottom. Again he rose and 
struggled for life — for an instant the buildings on the river's banks 
— the lights on the bridge — the black water and the fast-flying 
clouds were distinctly visible — once more he sank, and once again 
he rose. Bright flames of fire shot up from earth to heaven and 
reeled before his eyes, while the water thundered in liis ears and 



NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 67 

'' stunned him with its furious roar. Another instant — a gasp — a 
gurgle, and the Thames had borne him down, down from life and 
hope, to the blackness of darkness of the suicide's death. 



NAPOLEON BONAPAKTE. 

From the castle-crowned hills above the terraced gardens of 
Genoa, the purple sunmiits of Corsica can be seen on a clear 
Italian morning rising out of the sea. Thrown up by some pre- 
Adamic convulsion, and bathed by the Mediterranean, refreshed by 
cool breezes from the Alps and Apennines, and warmed by a 
southern sea ; with mountain peaks clothed in eternal snows, and 
valleys blushing in endless summer, it is one of the wildest fairy 
spots in the world. 

Solitary, grand, and beautiful, it seems a fitting birthplace for 
one who was to overshadow the world and die at last, like a 
wounded eagle, on another lone island of the ocean. 

Something greater than stars watched over the birth of Na- 
poleon ; and a power higher than fortune guided the destinies of 
the Bonaparte family. No one's history has been written by so 
many different hands, and no one's read by so many eyes as the 
Corsican soldier's. Not a generation has passed away since he 
died ; and his name and history are familiarly knovni to more 
men to-day than Alexander's or Caesar's. No man ever put forth 
such an influence on human fortunes. 

Men and nations bent before him as willows bend when the 
storm sweeps by. It exhausted and impoverished all Europe to 
crush him. Tiiey chained the eagle to the bold cliff of a volcanic 
rock of the ocean among the clouds, and for six years England 
kept a fleet to watch him and see him chafe and die. And then 
they took out his vitals and were sure he was dead ; and then 
they excavated a grave in the rock and welded his coffln by strong 
bars of iron ; and then they watched the place for twenty years. 



68 FRANKLIN SPEAKER, 

And when Europe was no longer afraid of the dead eagle's 
ashes, she let France take them back to the banks of the Seine. 
On the tenth of December, amidst the most imposing and magnifi- 
cent ceremonies that Paris has ever witnessed, the body of the 
Emperor was borne to the Invalides, and around it France 
gathered in love and veneration. Four of his own guard with 
naked sabers watched day and night by the ashes of their beloved 
chief. On the coffin lay the chapeau the hero had worn at Eylau, 
his sword, and imperial crown ; and over these emblems waved the 
standards taken at Austerlitz. Within their folds one of the 
eagles of the empire spread its golden wings and looked down on 
the hero, ^vith whose banners it had flown from the gulf of the 
Adriatic to the pillars of Hercules, from the snows of Russia to 
the sands of the Pyramids. 



DESTRUCTION OF THE ORIENT. 

The British fleet had swept the seas with bursting sails for six 
long weeks in search of its gallant foe. The French fleet lay 
moored in the form of a crescent close along the shore. The 
soundings of the dangerous bay were unknown to Nelson ; but he 
knew that where there was room for a Frenchman to lie at anchor, 
there must be room for an English sliip to lie alongside. 

Up went the signal for " close battle," and as the flag flew at 
the mast-head, a cheer of anticipated triumph burst from every 
ship in the British fleet. Slowly and majestically as the evening 
fell, the fleet came on beneath a cloud of canvas, furled their sails 
calmly— as a sea bird might fold its wings — and glided tranquilly 
onward till they met. Then flashed fierce welcome* from every 
port-hole, the crash of solid shot, the deafening shrieks of the 
shell ; and ever and anon, the cheer of battle rose clear and loud 
upon the darkness. 



WHO IS THE RICHEST MAN? 69 

What is that? 

The French admiral's ship is on fire. Through the roar of 
battle a whisper went that for a moment paralyzed every heart 
and hand. During that dread pause the fight was suspended, the 
very wounded ceased to groan, and in the solemn stillness clear 
and proud from her flaming decks rose the voices of the gallant 
Frenchmen chanting their own requiem. 

A moment more — and with the roar of a thousand battles the 
explosion came. The column of flame that shot upward to the 
very sky lighted up the ghastly scene from the red flags above to 
the red decks below, the far-off glittering sea and the dismantled 
ships — then darkness and silence fell again. 

The sun had set upon as proud a fleet as ever set sail from the 
shores of " Sunny France." Morning rose upon torn and blackened 
hulls ; and where the admiral's ship had been, the sea sparkled 
gayly in the sunshine. In the bay the tri-color was floating at one 
mast-head alone. Slowly and reluctantly, like an expiring hope, 
the pale flag fluttered down from her lofty spars, and the next in- 
stant there floated in the morning breeze the banner of Old 
England. 



WHO IS THE RICHEST MAN? 

S. H. Palpbey. 

Who is the richest ^ The crowd said : "He 
Whose pleasure-boats sail upon every sea, 
Whose villas rise upon mount and shore, 
Whose gardens broider wide acres o'er, 
Whose horses win at every race. 
Who hires the best seats at every place 
Where show is seen or music heard, 
Who buys of the rarest for bower and board 
And never stays to count the cost, — 
He is the richest, — he spends the most." 



70 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

But he squandered his all on his greed and pride : 
And he was a beggar before he died. 

Who is the richest 1 On 'Change, they agreed : 
" He who grudges his daily need, 
Who earns the most, and who spends the least, 
He who wastes nothing on show or feast, 
Kinsman or friend, but early and late 
O'er desk and ledger has toiled and sate 
From his boyhood up, till the gray hairs now 
Are growing few o'er his furrowed brow, — 
He should be richest, — he's paid the cost, — 
He must be richest who saves the most." 
But to him were love and care denied ; 
And he was a beggar when he died. 

Who is the richest 1 Said no man : 
" He whose house and whose food are plain, 
Whose coat is old, and afoot who goes 
To the homes of Sicknesses, Wants, and Woes, 
Who loves with his neighbor his all to share, 
And, to make it more, on himself to spare 
All that he can, nor count it lost ; 
Can he be rich who forgoes the most?" 
Though when he was dying, too, the poor 
Swarmed with small offerings in his door, 
Watched and tended and prayed and cried, 
Leaving no wealth, save of love, he died. 

Ere the third day brought its morning light, 
The three dead men rose up in the night 
And journeyed away to the Far-off Land 
And the street where the many mansions stand. 



BRAG. 71 

The spendthrift and miser, homeless there, 

Knocked at many a gate with many a prayer, 

But found all holted and, stiff and stark, 

Wandered away in the haunted dark. 

With teeth that chattered for fright and cold. 

But the other saw in letters of gold 

His name o'er a castle-portal fair, — 

Through the mists of death that hung in the air, — 

Flash like lightning ; and out there poured. 

With a burst of music, a shining horde 

Of visions bright, that, with sweet-voiced din. 

Thronged round him and lifted and bore him in. 

Sobbed the widow, " You made my heart sing for joy !" 

" Oh, my father dear ! " laughed the orphan boy. 

" You sheltered me ! " " You my famine fed ! " 

" You gave me my chance to earn honest bread !" 

And the prisoner shouted, " You came to me ! 

You brought me the truth that made me free ! " 

Wliile the angels sang, through the heavenly host, 

" He is the richest, who gives the most." 



BHAa. 

Humphrey McMaster, 

Brazen images and marvels of sculpture have marked man's 
appreciation of honesty, virtue, and beauty. All the gods and 
goddesses have been honored with temples and fanatical devotees ; 
heroes and their heroic deeds have been praised in immortal 
verse ; even the forces of nature are personified ; but we have yet 
to find a pantheon that contains a monument of Brag. 

Civilized taste disparages the boaster as a hair-brained, talkative 
j fellow who ought to be snubbed. Brag is a natural product of 
-formative society. The "big boys" of the infant world, Goliath, 
jAjax, and indeed all, with perfect unanimity and without the 



72 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

least suspicion that they might some day be smiled at, roundly 
boasted their prowess. Xor ought we to forget that the mihtary 
gentlemen who spouted hexameters for ten long years on the plains 
of Troy had no other way of advertising. If Agamemnon, after a 
great show of fight with the Trojan skirmish line, where there 
might have been much noise and dust — but not a heavy bill of 
damages — could have called the special correspondent of the 
Argils Daily Herald to his camp, and over a roasted sheep and a 
cask of wine, prepared the bulletin to be read next morning at 
breakfast throughout the Hellenic world, he doubtless would not 
have carried his heavy style of self-assertion to such a pitch as he 
needs must when fame depended solely on strength af lungs. 

Although the art of bragging flourishes in its native purity 
among the imcultured, it is not incompatible ^ith the refinement 
of civihzation. The unsophisticated yet heroic hunter of the 
West proclaims his descent from the nuptials of the horse and the 
alligator, and asserts his abihty to chastise imtamed felines of the 
wilderness of a weight equivalent to his OAvn. 

Nor does a good round chorus of brag fail to resound from all 
sorts and classes of men. Xations boast of their power, wealth, 
and progress ; poHtical parties of their purity and patriotic mo- 
tives ; corporations of their flourishing condition and value of their 
first mortgage bonds. Prize fighters, gamblers, thieves, pohticians, 
and all professional men brag. Dra^ving inspiration from casks and 
demijohns, even the most modest of men will mingle loud boasts 
with the bacchanahan revel. 



JOHN BROWN'S BODY. 

J. D. Shermax. 

]VIaxy a time amid the roar of battle has sounded the " Marseil 
laise." Many a time have the strains of that glorious anthem led I 
on the soldiers of France " to victory or death," and struck terror 
to the hearts of her bravest foes. 



JOHN BROWN'S BODT. ^ 73 

! It was the spring of 1862. Fitz-John Porter's division of the 
army of the Potomac was advancing upon Yorktown. On the 
morning of the fifth of April the troops were marching through a 
heavy belt of timber, bordered on either side by swamp lands. 
The rain was pouring down in torrents. The narrow wagon-road 
was one river of mud. Men and horses sank to their knees, and 
the slowly moving guns trailed their muzzles in the mire. 

At twelve o'clock, when the troops were well in the timber, and 
not a breath of air could reach the toiling columns, the clouds 
broke away, and the sun shone do^vn with all the warmth of 
the Southern noon. Burdened with knapsacks and cartridge- 
boxes, the men toiled on. Up came the deadly breath of the 
swamp. The ranks began to lag. Laughter and jest were no 
longer heard, and grim, dogged silence settled down upon the 
weary troops. 

Boom ! ahead of them one of the rebel guns has spoken ; soon 
I another, then another gave forth their angry defiance. Away 
went knapsack and blanket ; sullenly and silently the living 
stream flowed on to the open country beyond. 

Half a mile further and the current slackened. Officers com- 
manded and threatened, but the men were weary to the death. 
At that moment an officer struck up "John Brown's Body." The 
tune was new, and the words strange. As the air became familiar, 
voice after voice took up the strain. The struggling ranks grew 
straight, and soon the ceaseless tramp, tramp, tramp, of marching 
feet marked the quick-measured cadence of the inspiring chorus. 

They neared the edge of the timber. Through the trees above 
hissed the solid shot, and screamed the rebel shell. With deafen- 
ing roar the Union cannon answered back. But above the noise 
of falling timber, above the crash of bursting shell and the roar of 
i battle, swelled high and clear the grand old song of " John 
Brown's Body." The Army of the Potomac had found its " Mar- 
seillaise." 



74 • FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

THE STUDIES OF LIEE. 

"Wm. Rouxseville Algeb. 

It is beautiful to see with what point the principles of every 
school-study may be morahzed so as to teach man useful lessons 
for the guidance of his life and the culture of his character. How 
obvious, for example, is the spiritual equivalent of the proposition 
in natural philosophy, that a stream cannot rise higher than its 
fountain ! Action cannot be higher than motive. If we woidd 
be conquerors in the battle of destiny, we must have the faith 
that overcomes the world. 

The truths of mathematics are capable of striking appHcation to 
moral subjects. Since the whole is greater than any of its parts, 
how clear it is that hfe should not be frittered away in a petty 
regarding of its details, but that we should grasp it in our thought 
as ^n entirety, with dignified survey laying its ground-plan and 
commanding its outlines ! He is a mean man who deals in vulgar 
fractions to the neglect of integers. 

JS'othing can be straighter than a straight line ; and honest 
frankness is the shortest distance between the two points, a good 
design and a happy fulfiUment. 

One of the commonest mistakes of man consists in overlooking 
the fact that no number of units of one kind can compose a unit 
of another kind. An ounce of frankincense cannot be manu- 
factured from a million pennyworths of gold ; nor can any quan- 
tity of wealth or honor constitute one grain of happiness. The 
elementary atoms of happiness are strength, health, love, wisdom, 
peace, and hope ; no process has yet been discovered for directly 
transmitting money, noise, reputation, and show, into these com- 
ponents. 

The value of a figure depends not only on what it expresses by 
itself, but also on where it stands. Tlie figure Xapoleon expressed 
a wondrous energy and genius when a subaltern at Brienz ; but it 
denoted a world-shaking fate when at the head of the army on the 
field of Austerlitz. 



PENNSTL VANIA, 75 

Since division by less than one is the same as multiplication by 
more than one, the fraction of contentment can be increased in 
value as much by lessening the deifominator of what you want, 
as by enlarging the numerator of what you have. " iJ^ay," quoth 
Carlyle, " unless my algebra deceive me, unity itself divided by 
zero will give infinity. Make thy claim of wages a zero, then, and 
thou hast the world under thy feet." 



PENNSYLVANIA. 



Beautiful in her solitary grandeur, fair as a green island in a 
desert waste, proud as a lonely column reared in a wilderness, 
rises the land of Penn in the history of America. Here, beneath 
the elm of Saxamaxon was reared the holy altar of toleration. 
Here from the halls of the old State-House was first proclaimed 
the Declaration of Independence. Here, Frankhn drew do^vn the 
lightning from the sky, and bent the science of ages to the good of 
toiling man. Here Jefi"erson stood forth the consecrated prophet 
of freedom, proclaiming from Independence Hall the destiny of a 
continent, the freedom of a people. 

Yet it is a singular fact, that while other States have their 
eulogists, their historians, and their orators to speak of their past 
glories, their present prosperity, and their future fame, Penn- 
sylvania has none. She has no Pierpont to hymn her illustrious 
dead, no Jared Sparks to chronicle her revolutionary grandeur ; 
and yet, the green fields of Germantown, the t^vilight A^ale of the 
Brandywine, and the blood-stained soil of Paoh— all are stored 
with the sacred treasures of whitened bones. 

The character of the Pennsylvanian has been made an object of 
derision in aU parts of the world. We have been told that our 
people had no enterprise, no energies, no striking and effective 
qualities. Northern speculation has mocked at our sluggishness 



76 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

in falling into all the gambling schemes of the day. Southern 
chivaby has taunted us with our want of ardor in the resentment 
of insults. 

To the I^Torth we make no reply. Let our mountains with 
their stores of exhaustless wealth answer ; let the rich plains of 
the old Berkshire and the green fields of Lancaster answer ; let 
old Susquehanna Avith her people of iron nerve and her mountain 
stores of wealth and cultivation send forth her reply. 

And to the South, what shall be our answer? They ask for 
our illustrious dead; they point to the blood-staitied fields of 
Carolina and ask: " T^Tiere are your battle fields?" They point 
to Marion, to Sumpter, to Lee, to all the host of heroes who blaze 
along the Southern sky — " Pennsylvania, where are your heroes of 
the Revolution?" They need not ask the question more than 
once ; for at the sound, from his laureled grave in old Chester, 
springs to life again the hero of Pennsylvania's olden time, the 
undaunted general, the man of Paoli and Stony Point. "We need 
not repeat his name. 

The aged patriot sitting at the farm-house of Chester, in the 
calm of the summer twilight, utters that name to the listening 
group of grandchildren. And the old soldier of the Revolution, 
tottering on the verge of the grave, will start and tremble with a 
new life at its sound ; and, as he brushes the tear from the quiver- 
ing eyelid of age, will exclaim Avith a feeHng of pride that a cen- 
tury cannot destroy, "I too was a soldier with Mad Anthony 
Wajne." 



DEATH TRAPS. 



The other day a hundred or so men and women, boys and girls, 
were doing their daily work in a great five-story building in the 
city of Xew York. They had left their homes that morning as 
on other days — some with a smile or a jest — some with sad know- 
inir of the darker me.anin('-s of life. 



DEATH TRAPS. 77 

All the day there had been strange odors of burning pine — in- 
cense for fire-worshippers ; but tliey were too busy to note it ; they 
must work. A boy cries fire ; and some hear him. A turn of a 
key in an alarm-box and in a score of engine houses horses start 
to their places, firemen spring to their posts. Around the building 
there is a gathering of men and women who stop to see and hear. 
Soon the great steam fire-engines rush and rattle to their places ; 
lines of policemen keep back the ci'owd ; water to kill fire begins 
to play. Yes ! it is a sensation, a show, a wonder to look at for 
the throngers of Broadway and Beekman and Nassau streets. 
Wait a moment. Where are the hundred workers who a half 
hour ago toiled within those walls ? Were there means for their 
escape from sudden danger and a fearful death ? 

At the window yonder is a boy eighty feet from the cruel stones 
below — but a sign swings out from the story beneath him. He 
leaps for it, gains it ; a ladder comes and he is safe. Along a pipe 
clinging passes another ; from an open casement leaps a third — 
falling with a dull thud on the stones below, dead, crushed out of 
human semblance. 

But hark ! above the rattle of the engines and the roar of the 
uprushing flames, did you not hear them? Shrieks of utter 
agony ! At an open window in the upper story are three girls. 
It is death to leap ; it must be death to tarry. Help ! help ! — can 
no ladder reach them 1 The flames roar and crackle and hiss be- 
hind ; cruel flames hot for prey : the stones lie cold and hard be- 
low — cruel stones waiting for their victims. A great hush falls on 
the thronged thousands ; the engines work on with their metallic 
clank ; the flames roar upward, and the faces of the three women 
— afraid, ah ! so afraid of death ! stare hollow-eyed into the day- 
light. A great upheaval of fire — a hushed groan below, and the 
three fall backward into burning death. 

Civilization % humanity % law ? We would have a man hanged 
who slays another man ; is there no punishment for those who 
build and keep death-traps for men and women to perish in ] 



78 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 



PRINCIPLES HIGHEB THAN HTTMAN EXAMPLE. 

Charles Sumser. 

It is often said, "Let us not be wiser than our fathers." 
Eather, let us try to excel our fathers in wisdom. Let us imitate 
what in them was good, but not bind ourselves, as in the chains 
of fate, by their imperfect example. Principles are higher than 
human examples. Examples may be followed when they aceord 
with the admonitions of duty. But he is unwise and wicked who 
attempts to lean upon these rather than upon those truths which, 
like the everlasting Arm, cannot fail I 

Li all modesty be it said, we have lived to little purpose if 
we are not wiser than the generations that have gone before us. 
It is the grand distinction of man that he is a progressive being . 
that his reason at the present day is not merely the reason of a 
single human being, but that of the whole human race, in all 
ages from which knowledge has descended, in aU lands from which 
knowledge has been borne away. 

We are heirs to an inheritance of truth, grandly accumulatiner 
from generation to generation. The child at his mother's knee i> 
now taught the orbits of the heavenly bodies, 

" Wkere worlds on worlds compose one nniverse," 

the nature of this globe, the character of the tribes of men by 
which it is covered, and the geography of nations, to an extent far 
beyond the ken of the most learned of other days. 

It is therefore true, as has been said, that antiquity is the real 
infancy of man ; reason and the kindlier virtues of age, repudiating 
and abhorring force, now bear sway. We are the true ancient?. 
The single lock on the battered forehead of Old Time is thinner 
now than when our fathers attempted to grasp it ; the hour-glass 
has been turned often since ; the sc\i:he is heaA^ier kden with the 
work of death. 



NATIONAL INSTITUTIONS. 79 

! Let us cease, then, to look for a lamp to our feet in the feeble 
j tapers that glimmer in the sepulchers of the past. Rather let us 
' hail those ever-burning hghts above, in whose beams is the bright- 
j ness of noonday ! 



NATIONAL INSTITUTIONS. 

Alexander H. Stephens. 

The institutions of a people, political and moral, are the matrix 
in which the germ of their organic structure quickens into life, 
takes root, develops in form, nature, and character. Our institu- 
tions constitute the basis — the matrix — from which spring all our 
characteristics of development and gTeatness. Look at Greece ! 
There is the same fertile soil ; the same blue sky ; the same inlets 
and harbors ; the same ^gean ; the same Olympus ; — there is the 
same land where Homer sung, where Pericles spoke; — it is in 
nature the same old Greece ; but it is living Greece no more ! 

Descendants of the same people inhabit the country ; yet, what 
is the reason of this mighty difference 1 In the midst of present 
degradation, we see the glorious fragments of ancient works of art 
— temples, with ornaments and inscriptions that incite wonder 
and admiration — the remains of a once high order of civilization, 
which have outlived the language they spoke ! Upon them all, 
"Ichabod" is written — their glory has departed! \Vliy is this 
so ? I answer this : Their institutions have been destroyed ! 
They were but the fruits of their forms of government — the matrix 
from which their civilization sprung. And when once the institu- 
tions of our people shall have been destroyed, there is no earthly 
power that can bring back the Promethean fire to kindle them 
here again, any more than in that ancient land of eloquence, 
poetry, and song ! 



80 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 



THE TWiJETS. 

Henry S. Leigh. 

In form and feature, face and limb, 

I grew so like my brother, 
That folks got taking me for him, 

And each for one another. 
It puzzled all our kith and kin, 

It reached a fearful pitch ; 
For one of us was born a twin, 

And not a soul knew which. 

One day, to make the matter worse, 

Before our names were fixed, 
As we were being washed by nurse. 

We got completely mixed ; 
And thus you see, by fate's decree. 

Or rather nurse's whim. 
My brother John got christened me. 

And I got christened him. 

This fatal Kkeness ever dogged 

My footsteps when at school, 
And I was always getting flogged, 

^Mien John turned out a fooL 
I put this question, fruitlessly. 

To every one I knew, 
^'- What would you do, if you were me. 

To prove that you were you ?" 

Our close resemblance turned the tide 

Of my domestic life, 
For somehow, my intended bride 

Became my brother's wife. 



A VISION OF WAR. 81 

In fact, year after year the same 

Absurd mistakes went on, 
And when I died, the neighbors came 

And buried brother John. 



A VISION OF WAR. 

Sydney Dobell. 



I I'm leaning where you loved to lean in eventides of old ; 

! The sun has sunk an hour ago behind the treeless wold. 

I In this old oriel that we loved, how oft I sit forlorn, 
Gazing, gazing, up the vale of green and waving corn. 
I love it, soldier brother, at this weird, dim hour, for then 
The serried ears are swords and spears, and the fields are fields of 
men. 

Eank on rank in faultless phalanx stern and still I can discern, 
Phalanx after faultless phalanx in dumb armies still and stern ; 
Army on army, host on host, till the bannered nations stand, 
As the dead may stand for judgment, silent on the o'er-peopled 
land. 

Hist ! I see the stir of glamour far upon the twilight wold. 
Hist ! I see the vision rising ! List ! and as I speak, behold ! 
These dull mists are mists of morning, and behind yon eastern 

hUl, 
The hot sun abides my bidding ; he shall melt them when I will. 

All the night that now is past, the foe hath labored for the day. 
Creeping through the stealthy dark, like a tiger to his prey. 
Throw the window wide ! Strain thine eyes along the dusky vale ! 
Art thou cold with horror 1 Has thy bearded cheek grown pale ? 
'Tis the armed Russian host, flooding up the solemn plain, 
Secret as a silent sea, mighty as a moving main. 



82 FRANKLIN SPEAKER, 

But hark ! the sentry's word ; then his signal gun is heard, i 

Yon ambush green is stirred, yon laboring leaves are tossed, 
And a sudden saber waves, and, like dead from opened graves, 
A hundred men stand up to meet a host. 

Dumb as death, with bated breath, 

Calm upstand that fearless band. 

Then a word, brief and shrill, that rules them like a will. 

Fire ! — Eound that green knoll the sudden war clouds roll. 

And from the opposing ranks so fierce an answering blast ' 

Of whirling death came back that the green trees turned to } 

black. 
And dropped their leaves in winter as it passed. 

A moment on each side the surging smoke is wide. 

Then a shout breaks out, and lo ! they have rushed upon the foe; | 

Fire and flash, smoke and crash. 

The fogs of battle close o'er friends and foes, and they are gone ! 

Alas, thou bright-eyed boy ! alas, thou mother's joy ! 

With thy long hair so fair, thou didst so bravely lead them on ! 

I faint with pain and fear. Ah, heaven ! what do I hear 1 

A trumpet note so near ? 

What are these that race Hke hunters at a chase ? 

Who are these that run a thousand men as one ? 

What are these that crash the trees far in the dusky rear % 

Fight on, thou young hero, there's help upon the way — 

The light -horse are coming, the great guns are coming. 

The Highlanders are coming ; good Lord, give us the day ! 

Hurrah for the brave and the leal ! Hurrah for the strong and j 

the true ! 
Hurrah for the helmets of steel ! Hurrah for the bonnets of blue ! 
A run and a cheer, the Highlanders are here ! 
A gallop and a cheer, the light-horse are here ! 
A rattle and a cheer, the great guns are here ! 



WINTER. 83 

With a cheer they wheel round and face the foe ! 

As the troopers wheel about, their long swords are out ; 

With a trumpet-clang and shout in they go ! 

Kow, tyrant, hold thine own ! blare the trumpet, peal the drum ! 

From yonder hillside dark, the storm is on you ! Hark ! 

Swift as lightning, loud as thunder, down they come ! 

As on some Scottish shore, with mountains frowning o'er, 

The sudden tempests roar from the glen, 

And roll the trembhng sea in billows to the lea, 

Came the charge of the gallant Highlandmen, 

And, glory be to God, they have stemmed the foremost flood. 

I lay me on this sod and breathe again. 

In the precious moments won, the bugle call is gone 

To the tents where it never rang in vain, 

And lo ! the landscape wide is red from side to side, 

And all the might of England loads the plain. 



WINTER. 

Douglas Jerrold. 

The streets were empty. Pitiless cold had driven all who had 
the shelter of a roof to their homes; and the north-east blast 
seemed to howl in triumph above the untrodden snow. Winter 
was at the heart of all things. The ^vretched, dumb with exces- 
sive misery, suffered, in stupid resignation, the tyranny of the 
season. Human blood stagnated in the breast of want ; and death 
in that despairing hour, losing its teiTors, looked in the eyes of 
many a wretch a sweet deliverer. 

It was a time when the very poor, barred from the commonest 
things of earth, take strange counsel with themselves, and, in the 
deep humility of destitution, believe they are the burden and the 
offal of the world. 



84 FRANKI^IN SPEAKER. 

It was a time when the easy, comfortable man, touched with 
finest sense of human suffering, gives from his abundance ; and 
whilst bestowing, feels almost ashamed that, with such wide-spread 
misery circled around him, he has all things fitting, all things 
grateful. The smitten spirit asks wherefore he is not of the 
multitude of wretchedness ; demands to know for what especial 
excellence he is promoted above the thousand, thousand starving 
creatures ; in his very tenderness for misery, tests his privilege of 
exemption from a woe that withers manhood in man, bowing him 
downward to the brute. And so questioned, this man gives in 
modesty of spirit — in very thankfulness of soul. His alms are not 
cold, formal charities; but reverent sacrifices to his suffering 
brother. 

It was a time when selfishness hugs itself in its own warmth, 
with no other thoughts than of its pleasant possessions ; all made 
pleasanter, sweeter, by the desolation around ; when the mere 
worldling rejoices the more in his warm chamber because it is so 
bitter cold without, when he eats and drinks with whetted appetite, 
because he hears of destitution prowling like a woK around his 
weU-barred house ; when, in fine, he bears his every comfort about 
him with the pride of a conqueror ; — a time when such a man sees 
in the misery of his fellow-beings nothing save his o^vn victory of 
fortune — his own successes in a suffering world. To such a man, 
the poor are but the tattered slaves that grace his triumph. 

It was a time, too, when human nature often shows its true 
divinity, and with misery hke a garment clinging to it, forgets its 
wretchedness in sympathy with the sufferings ; — a time, when in 
the cellars and garrets of the poor are acted scenes Avhich make the 
noblest heroism of life ; which prove the immortal texture of the 
human heart, not wholly scarred by the branding-iron of the tor- 
turing hours ; — a time when in want, in anguish, in throes of 
mortal agony, some seed is sown that bears a flower in heaven. 



RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 85 



BELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

Edward A. Terry. 

It has been all too common in some halls of physical science to 
treat unkindly the venerable principles that, in the forms of devout 
belief, have supplied for ages the comfort and solace and hope of 
the race. And yet, the keenest edge of scientific scalpel has never 
availed to reach the line that separates those principles and beliefs 
from the basic elements of social morality and social weal. 

Nor can we accord to science in its incomplete advance any 
right of patronage over the religious world. We must be slow to 
judge where so much remains unknown. Science and religion 
must be at one ; morality and knowledge go hand in hand. Deal- 
ing with the same subject and seeking the same end — the perfec- 
tion of the race — the one must needs be the handmaid of the 
other. 

We have by no means reached the goal of scientific inquiry. 
Far as we have gone, still further must we yet go ; and the 
higher we ascend, the broader becomes our vision. Fields of 
thought that seemed boundless in our humble condition become 
only picturesque patches in the widened landscape of our more 
elevated view. We are but beginning yet and must needs be calm 
— have just set out upon our journey, looking hopefully to the 
future. The wondrous developments of science, the unfolding of 
great Nature's scroll have but just begun, and who shall say that 
in the light thus shed new developments and lines of God's great 
features may not still shine forth upon religion's magic canvas ; 
and that as human intellects are chastened and refined by science, 
human hearts may be widened, too, to receive forever still higher 
and still holier appreciations of His wondrous beauty and His 
boundless love ? 

Not one of us who are now plodding slowly onward in this 
journey can expect to reach the promised land of all scientific 
knowledge ; it is well that already we have passed out of Egypt. 



80 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

Cast on a broad ocean of discovery, we freely give onr sails to the 
bosom of the deep. Just now we have but inklings of the treas- 
ure stiU beyond us, some drift-wood to teU us of the coast toward 
which we tend. 

Day by day some new thought comes to change our previous 
notions — and who at last shall say, that as the world of intellect 
is thus evolving, each successive hour, into new and ever-increasing 
forms of beauty, the reHgious world around us is not doing its i 
work in the advance — and that whilst the earth goes on cycling r< 
round its endless course by its fixed law of gravity, the life-forces 
of the universe by a like fixed law are not unrolling, like a scroll - 
that holds the image of the Infinite — thus setting forth the miitj 
and variety of God and His creation ? 



JEANIE DEAITS INTEBVLKW WITH aXTEEN CAHOI-IirE. 

Sib Walter Scott. 

A SIGNAL was made for Jeanie to advance from the spot where 
she had hitherto remained. 

Her Majesty could not help smiling at the awe-struck manner 
in which the quiet, demure figure of the httle Scotchwoman ad- 
vanced towards her, and yet more at the first sound of her broad 
Northern accent. But Jeanie had a voice low and sweetly-tonc 
and she besought " her Leddyship to have pity on a poor, mis- 
guided young creature," in tones so affecting, that, like the notes 
of some of her native songs, provincial vulgarity was lost in 
pathos. 

" Stand up, young woman," said the Queen, in a kind ton 
" and tell me how you have traveled up from Scotland." 

" Upon my foot mostly, madam," was the reply. 

" Wliat, all that immense way upon foot ? How far can y : v. 
walk in a day?" 

" Five-and-twenty miles."' 



JEANIE DEAN. 87 

" I thought I was a good walker," said the Queen, " but this 
shames me sadly." 

"May your Leddyship never hae sae weary a heart that ye 
canna be sensible of the weariness of the limbs," said Jeanie. 

" And I didna just a'thegither walk the haill way neither, for I 
had whiles the cast of a cart ; and I had the cast of a horse from 
Ferrybridge — and divers other easement," said Jeanie. 

" With all these accommodations," answered the Queen, " you 
must have had a very fatiguing journey, and, I fear, to little pur- 
pose ; since, if the King were to pardon your sister, in all proba- 
bility it would do her little good, for I suppose your people of 
Edinburgh would hang her out of spite." 

" O my sister ! my puir sister, Efiie, she still lives, though her 
days and hours are numbered ! She still lives, and a word of the 
King's mouth might restore her to a broken-hearted auld man, 
that never in his daily and nightly exercise forgot to pray that his 
Majesty might be blessed with a long and prosperous reign, and 
that his throne, and the throne of his posterity, might be established 
in righteousness. madam, if ever ye kend what it was to sor- 
row for and with a sinning and a suffering creature, whose mind 
is sae tossed that she can be neither ca'd fit to live or die, have 
some compassion on our misery ! Save an honest house from dis- 
honor, and an unhappy girl, not eighteen years of age, from an 
early and dreadful death ! Alas ! it is not when we sleep soft 
and wake merrily ourselves that we think on the other people's 
sufferings. Our hearts are waxed light within us then, and we 
i are for righting our ain wrongs and fighting our ain battles. But 
when the hour of trouble comes to the mind or to the body — and 
seldom may it visit your Leddyship — and when the hour of death 
comes, that comes to high and low — lang and late may it be 
yours ! — Oh, my Leddy, then it isna what we hae dune for our- 
sells, but what we hae dune for others, that we think on maist 
j pleasantly. And the thoughts that ye hae intervened to spare the 
ipuir thing's life will be sweet in that hour, come when it may." 



88 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

Tear followed tear down Jeanie's cheeks as she pleaded her 
sister's cause with a pathos which was at once simple and solemn. 

" This is eloquence," said her Majesty to the Duke of Argyle. 
" Young woman," she continued, addressing herself to Jeanie, " I 
cannot grant a pardon to your sister — but you shall not want my 
warm intercession with his Majesty. Take this housewife case," 
she continued, putting a small embroidered needle-case into 
Jeanie's hands ; " do not open it now, but at your leisure — you 
will find something in it which will remind you that you have 
had an interview with Queen Caroline." 



THE AVENGERS OF HYPATIA. 

Charles Kingsley, 

WuLF, who had descended from the parapet whence the prince 
of the Goths had fallen, now shook the rope ; and breathless with ' 
curiosity and fear, they hauled him up. He stood among them 
for a few moments, silent, as if stunned by the weight of some 
enormous woe. " Odin has taken his son home, wolves of the ^ 
Goths," and he held out his hand to the awe-struck ring, and burst ■ 
into an agony of weeping ; — a clotted tress of long, fair hair lay in 
his palm. It was snatched ; handed from man to man. One 
after another recognized the beloved golden locks ; and then, the 
great simple hearts, too brave to be ashamed of tears, broke out 
and wailed like children. " Men," said Wulf, " we have one 
thing to do. The Amal must not go to Valhalla without fair 
attendance. Go down, heroes ; throw the gates open ; and call in 
the Greek hounds to the funeral supper of a son of Odin." 

The mob had Aveltered and howled ineffectually around the 
house for some half-hour ; but the lofty walls, opening on the • 
street only by a few narrow windows in the higher stories,' 
rendered it impregnable. Suddenly the iron gates were drawn' 
back, disclosing to the front rank the court, glaring empty and 
silent and ghastly in the moonlight. For an instant they recoiled ^ 



NAPOLEON III. 89 

with a vague dread of treachery; but the niass behind pressed 
them forward ; and in swept the murderers of Hypatia, till the 
court was full of choking wretches, surging against the walls 
and pillars in aimless fury. Then, from under the archway on 
either side, rushed a body of tall, armed men, driving back all in- 
comers more ; the gates slid together again upon their grooves ; 
and the wild beasts of Alexandria were trapped at last. 

And then began a murder, grim and great. From three dif- 
ferent doors issued a line of Goths, whose helmets and mail- 
shirts made them invulnerable to the clumsy weapons of the mob, 
and who began hewing their way right through the living mass, 
helpless from their close-packed array. True, they were but as 
one to ten ; but what are ten curs to one lion ? 

And the moon rose higher and higher, staring down ghastly and 
unmoved upon that doomed court of the furies ; and still the bills 
and swords hewed on and on. 

The Goths drew the corpses, as they fomid room, towards a dark 
pile in the midst, Avhere old Wulf sat upon a heap of the slain, 
staging the praises of the Amal and the glories of Valhalla ; the 
shrieks of his lute rose shrill above the shrieks of the flying and the 
wounded ; and its wild waltz-time danced and rollicked on, swifter 
and swifter, in awful mockery of the terror and agony around. 

And so, by men and purposes which recked not of her, — as is 
the wont of Providence — was the blood of Hypatia avenged in 
part that night. 



NAPOLEON III. 

Charles L. Stone. 

Tradition tells us that before the French revolution, while the 
Bourbons sat securely upon the throne they had held for centuries, 
on the other side of the Pyrenees, in a little Spanish hamlet, an 
aged fortune-teller read in the delicate veins of a Creole maiden, 
that her blood should prove the title-deed to the throne of France. 



90 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

April 20th, 1808, was born the child destined to fulfill this 
strange prediction. His life presents three phases : the period 
of intrigue, of power, and of overthrow, October 30th, 1836, 
Louis Napoleon, at the age of twenty-eight, presented himself at 
Strasburg to the Fourth Artillery, bearing in one hand a tame 
eagle trained to light upon his head, and in the other " the sword 
of Austerlitz." The little nephew tried to look like his great 
uncle ; and dramatically announced a resolve to conquer or die foi 
France. But the eagle of Austerlitz ignominously alighted upon a 
neighboring post, and the morning was too cold for martial enthu- 
siasm. A few hours later saw the caged patriot driven in close 
custody toward Paris. ^ 

Living a life, profligate and bohemian, having failed at Bou- 
logne, having been imprisoned at the fortress of Ham, the advent 
urer passed twelve restless, plotting years. The 26th of Sep 
tember, 1848, Charles Louis Xapoleon Bonaparte took his sea 
in the National Assembly and SAvore fidehty to the Democratic 
Republic. On the 10th of December five million Frenchmei 
elected the exile prince, the restless desperado of Strasburg an( 
Boulogne, the escaped prisoner of Ham, the debauchee of Xe\ 
York, the roue of England, the London constable. President o 
the Republic of France. 

His presidential term drew near its close. A re-election woul 
be iUegal. He called about him as ministers Arnaud, Momy, an 
Persigny, men who were equally skillful, daring, and unscrupulous 
and together they plotted the 2nd of December. The momin 
came. He dragged two hundred and twenty of the nation? 
deputies from their beds to prison ; flooded the city with proch 
mations ; crowded it with drunken soldiery ; broke up the Xationt 
Assembly ; and usurped all the functions of government. 

And this same Louis Xapoleon was the man who, four yea: 
before, had sworn to " remain faithful to the Democratic Republi 
one and indivisible." He imprisoned or exiled all the intelligen( 
of France, and then marched the ignorant peasantry through rani 



LOSSES. 91 

f soldiers, to sanction with open ballot a constitution trampled, a 
tberty strangled, a freedom smothered in blood. Power built 
jn such foundations could not resist the hand of an avenging 
^od. 

.j Close by the corrupt despotism, founded on ignorance, supported 
jiy fraud, had grown up, from the allies of Jena, a civilization 
bure, healthful, strong, based upon universal intelligence. On 
.his side of the Ehine was the darkness of past ages ; on that, the 
jight of the nineteenth century. On this side were tyranny. 
Ignorance, superstition ; on that, culture, progress, freedom. 
J In the passes of the Yosges, around the lines of Metz, and on 
ihe field of Sedan, the empire, whose essence was appearance, 
.aiet the empire whose essence was reality. The unsubstantial 

Iabric of fraud Avas dashed against the solid product of a genuine 
ife. The genius of sham was crushed by the genius of truth ; 
.nd mpoleon the Third, again a prisoner, was vanquished in his 
;k\'arfare against human progress. 



LOSSES. 

Frances Brown. 

Upon the white sea-sand 

There sat a pilgrim band. 
Telling the losses that their lives had known ; 

While evening waned away 

From breezy cliff and bay, 
And the strong tides went out with weary moan. 

One spake, with quivering lip. 

Of a fair freighted ship, 
p! With all his household to the deep gone down ; 

jj But one had wilder woe — 

r| For a fair face, long ago 

■i Lost in the darker depths of a great town. 



92 FRANKLIN SPEAKER, 

There were who mourned their youth 

With a most loving ruth, 
For its brave hopes and memories ever green ; 

And one upon the west 

Turned an eye that would not rest, 
For far-off hills Avhereon its joy had been. 

Some talked of vanished gold, 

Some of proud honors told, 
Some spoke of friends that were their trust no more ; 

And one of a green gi'ave 

Beside a foreign wave. 
That made liim sit so lonely on the shore. 

But when theu' tales were done, 

There spake among them one, 
A stranger, seeming from all sorrow free ; 

" Sad losses have ye met. 

But mine is heavier yet ; 
For a believing heart hath gone from me." 

"Alas !" these pilgrims said, 

" For the living and the dead — 
For fortune's cruelty, for love's sure cross, 

For the wrecks of land and sea ! 

But, however it came to thee, 
Thine, stranger, is life's last and heaviest loss." 



HUMAN LITTLENESS. 

W. H. De Shon. 



Unless coupled with greatness, individual littleness seldom 
becomes notorious. If Hamlet had never uttered his sublime 
words, if Macbeth and Brutus had never murdered, if Lear had 
never cursed or Portia pleaded, if Shylock had never hated or 



HUMAN LITTLENESS, 93 

Jessica loved, the world perchance would never have heard of 
Will. Shakespeare, the poacher and gallant. Why should we 
remember that on a wild, stormy night, at such a place, at such a 
time, intemperance added another victim to the thousands that 
had already perished unnoticed on its altars, if the weird voice of 
a mystic raven did not unite with that of every tinkling, chiming, 
clanging, tolling bell to proclaim the genius and keep green the 
memory of Edgar Allan Poe 1 

There is an opinion quite prevalent, that littleness must neces- 
sarily be mean, degrading, and weak, hampering greatness as a 
non-combatant, rather than attacking it as an active enemy. This 
is a fallacy. Greatness is the child of inspiration. Without this 
divine power it becomes error ; and error, in any form, is little- 
ness. Uninspired greatness, therefore, is superior littleness — the 
worst enemy of humanity. It has two forms. The destiny of 
either is eternal death. In one, however, wrong may apjDear as a 
reformer ; in the other it is always a destroyer. 

The littleness of Napoleon is an example of the former. His 
genius embodied the three essential characteristics of a great 
general : forethought, abstraction, will. He talked of victory 
before a sword had been drawn or a shot fired, and complimented 
the bravery of those whose ears would never hear or voices swell 
the song of triumph. Undisturbed by the roar of cannon, the 
shouts of contending hosts, or the cries of the wounded and 
dying, he executed, in its minutest details, the great plan of the 
battle with that calm confidence of success no momentary defeat 
could shake, no petty reverse destroy. 

Underneath and permeating all was the stern will that brooked 
no opposition, that shrank from no sacrifice, that knew no defeat. 
There are subterranean streams which roll their hidden waters 
through slowly wasting channels for many patient centuries. We 
look at the smiling hills above them and say, they are everlasting. 
But in the far-off future every cascade will shimmer in the dis- 
figured face of an undermined mountain ; while its falling silver 



94 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

murmurs the triumph song. So beneath its calm exterior flowed 
the current of his will, biding patiently the time when it should 
burst its barriers to sweep away the thrones of kings and bear on 
its restless tide the wreck of empires. 

Ambition was the all-absorbing littleness of l!^apoleon. [N'ot 
that hackneyed word of many meanings, under which the nine- 
teenth century has classed two-thirds of the human passions, but 
that ambition whose subtle purity Shakspeare defines, whose 
superior littleness Milton has demonized. Its flame kindled at 
the storming of the barricades in '89, burned with its glory at 
Austerlitz, paled at burning Moscow, flickered at Waterloo, and 
went out in the tempest at St. Helena. 

It had its mission. Forms, dogmas, bigotries, and exploded 
theories clogged the wheels of civilization. Conservatism was 
powerless. Europe clamored for a reform. A fanatic appears. 
The sobs of a discarded wife, the death cry of a poor German 
bookseller, the wail of nations over their dead heroes, hymn his 
march to empire. Armies slept unsentineled. Thrones tottered ; 
Europe trembled ; the world wondered. Then came Waterloo ; 
civilization resumed its joyful march ; and the superior littleness 
of Napoleon had accomplished its mission. 



RELIGION GIVES INSPIRATION TO ART. 

R. S. Storks 

In lordliest buildings it is always*their connection with what is 
unseen which gives the final majesty and rhythm. It is not 
the palace, with splendid fa9ade, and internal wealths of mosaic 
and marquetry, it is not the fortress, the theater, or the bourse, 
which best expresses or animates the genius whose subduing 
thought sets in motion the quarry. One must build to the praise 
of a Being above, to build the noblest memorial of himself. Tlie 
thought of the something unsearchable and immense, toward 
which all human life is tending — the thought of domains of mys- 



SUCCESS. 95 

terious height, and unhorizoned expanse, with which the expectant 
soul in man has already relations — this must exalt and sanctify 
the spirit, that it may pile the stubborn rock into superb and 
lovely proportions. 

And with it must come a sense of intervention from such 
higher realms, to lift the environed human spirit toward that 
which transcends it, and to open the paths to immortal possession. 
Then, Brunelleschi may set his dome on unfaltering piers. Then, 
Angelo may verily "hang the pantheon in the air." Then, the 
unknown builder, whose personality disappears in his work, may 
stand an almost inspired mediator between the upward-looking 
thought and the spheres overhead. Each line then leaps with a 
swift aspiration, as the vast structure rises, in nave and transept, 
into pointed arch and vanishing spire. The groined roof grows 
dusky with majestic glooms ; while, beneath, the windows flame, 
as with apocalyptic light of jewels. Angelic presences, sculptured 
upon the portal, invite the wayfarer, and wave before him their 
wings of promise. Within is a worship which incense only 
clouds, which spoken sermons only mar. The building itself be- 
comes a worship, a Gloria in Excelsis, articulate in stone ; the 
noblest tribute offered on earth, by any art, to Him from whom its 
impulse came, and with the ineffable majesty of whose spirit all 
skies are filled ! 



STTCCESS. 

H. W. Longfellow. 

Every man must patiently bide his time. He must wait. 
More particularly in lands like my native land, where the pulse of 
life beats with such feverish and impatient throbs, is the lesson 
needfid. Our national character wants the dignity of repose. 
We seem to live in the midst of a battle, — there is such a din, 
such a hurrying to and fro. In the streets of a crowded city it is 
difficult to walk slowly. You feel the rushing of the crowd, and 



96 FRANKLIN SFEAKEB. 

rush with, it onward. In the press of our life it is difficult to be 
calm. In this stress of wind and tide, all professions seem to 
drag their anchors, and are swept out into the main. 

The voices of the Present say, " Come !" But the voices of the 
Past say, " Wait ! " With calm and solemn footsteps the rising 
tide bears against the rushing torrent up stream, and pushes back 
the hurrying waters. With no less calm and solemn footsteps, 
nor less certainty, does a great mind bear up against public 
opinion, and push back its hurrying stream. 

Therefore should every man wait,— should bide his time. Xot 
in listless idleness, — not in useless pastime, — not in querulous de- 
jection, — but in constant, steady, cheerful endeavors, always will- 
ing and fulfilling and accomi)lishing his task, that, when the 
occasion comes, he may be equal to the occasion. 

And if it never comes, what matters it 1 A\Tiat matters it to 
the world, whether you or I or another man did such a deed or 
wrote such a book, so be it the deed and book were well done ] 
It is the part of an indiscreet and troublesome ambition to care too 
much about fame, — about what the world says of us; — to be 
always looking into the faces of others for approval ; to be always 
anxious for the effect of what we do and say; to be always 
shouting to hear the echo of our o^vn voices. 



HOLLAND. 

J. A. Wtlie. 

Holland, its border of sand hillocks interspersed with tufts of 
grass once crossed, quickly discloses its wealth. I foimd it all 
verdant ; a land that pours into the laps of its inhabitants without 
stop or stint the riches of the earth, the fruit of the tree, and the 
golden gains of commerce. 

But the most marvelous thing about this marvelous land is its 
history. In the sixteenth century, when the Reformation was 



HOLLAND. 97 

young and Philip II. — monarch of an empire prouder and stronger 
than even Eome in her pahniest days — stood over the bleeding 
body of European liberty with sword uplifted, who dared to be 
the champion of a cause that seemed " drawn to death and ready 
to perish?" 

France wavered; Germany stood back; England was luke- 
warm; Italy sided with Spain. It was the little Holland that 
threw dovm the gage of battle to the tyrant. 

The contest that followed is one of the grandest epics in the 
world's history. Spain won battles ; and Holland lost them ; and 
yet every victory brought the former nearer to defeat ; and every 
defeat brought the latter nearer to victory. An enigma this which 
men have great difficulty in reading. 

Under her great leader, William of Orange, Holland advanced 
as the church advances, through a series of discomfitures to a 
glorious triumph. Not otherwise can the highest order of vic- 
tories be achieved. A vulgar success may be in the power of the 
strongest battalion ; but the nation that would aspire to garlands 
that fade not, must by other means win the prize. " He that 
loseth his life shall find it," is the dictate of inspiration ; and the 
saying is true of nations as of individuals. 

In the great contest in which she engaged, Holland risked her 
life ; she buried herself beneath the waves of the North Sea ; she 
died ; and from that death she rose to a new and higher life. She 
returned from the depths of the grave to find that dominion, 
liberty, learning, piety, and wealth which she seemed to renounce 
forever when she preferred death to submission. The mighty 
Spain quickly shriveled into insignificance. The little Holland 
sent her ships, her colonists, and her fame to the ends of the 
earth ; and had she kept steady hold upon the principles of her 
heroic age, she might at this day have been, in point of maritime 
standing, the "England" of the world. 

5 



98 FRANKLIN SPEAKER, 



APPEAL TO THE ROMANS. 

Edward Bulwer Lytton. 

Let the past perish, let darkness shroud it, let it sleep forever 
over the crumbling temples and desolate tombs of its forgotten 
sons, if it cannot afford us, from its disgraved secrets, a guide for 
the present and the future. 

It is nothing to know what we have been, unless it is with a 
desire of knowing what we ought to be. Our ancestors are 
mere dust and ashes save when they speak to our posterity ; and 
then their voices resound not from the earth below, but the heaven 
above. There is an eloquence in memory because it is the nui-se 
of hope. There is a sanctity in the past, but only because of the 
chronicles it retains, chronicles of the progress of mankind, step- 
ping-stones in civilization, in liberty, and in knowledge. 

Our fathers forbid us to recede ; they teach us what is our 
rightful heritage ', they bid us reclaim, they bid us augment that 
heritage, preserve their virtues, and avoid their errors. These are 
the true uses of the past. Like some sacred edifice it is a tomb 
upon which to rear a temple. 

Formerly to the emperor was confided vast authority ; but by 
whom? By whom? I say, "By the Eoman Senate." What 
was the Roman Senate? The representatives of the Roman 
people. All power was the gift of the people. A^'^lat have you to 
give now ? Who, what single person, what petty chief, asks you 
for the authority he assumes ? His Senate is his sword ; his char- 
ter of license is written not with ink, but with blood. The people ! 
There is no people. Would to God we might disentomb the spirit 
of the past as easily as her records. I am an humble man ; but I 
have this distinction : I have raised against myself many foes and 
scoffers for that which I have done for Rome. I am hated because 
I love my country ; I am despised because I would exalt her. I 
retaliate ; I shall be avenged. Three traitors in your own palaces 
shall betray you, — luxury, envy, and dissension. 



BAT BILLY. 99 

The jubilee approaches ; and the eyes of all Cliristendom will 
be directed hither. Here, when from all quarters of the globe 
men come for peace, shall they find discord ? seeking absolution, 
shall they perceive but crime 1 In the center of God's dominion, 
shall they weep at your weakness ? In the seat of the martyred 
saints, shall they shudder at your vices? In the fountain and 
source of Christ's love, shall they find all law unknown 1 

You were the glory and example of the world ; will you be its 
by-word and its warning 1 Eise, Romans ! while it is yet time. 
Pluck the scales from the hand of fraud ; the sword from the 
hand of violence. Gain a victory greater than that of the Caesars 
— a victory over yourselves. Let the pilgrims of the world behold 
the resurrection of Rome ! Make one epoch of the jubilee of 
religion and the restoration of law. Lay the first-fruits of your 
renovated liberties upon the altars of the church ; and never since 
the world began shall men have made a more grateful offering to 
their God. 



BAY BILLY. 

Frank H. Gassaway. 

'TwAS the last fight at Fredericksburg — 

Perhaps the day you reck — 

Our boys, the Twenty-second Maine, 

Kept Early's men in check. 

Just where Wade Hampton boomed away, 

The fight went neck and neck. 

All day we held the weaker w^ing. 

And held it with a will ; 

Five several stubborn times we charged 

The battery on the hill. 

And five times beaten back, re-formed, 

And kept our columns still. 



100 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

At last from out the center fight 

Spurred up a General's Aid, 

" That battery must silenced be !" 

He cried as past he sped. 

Our Colonel simply touched his cap, 

And then, with measured tread. 

To lead the crouching line once more 

The grand old fellow came. 

No wounded man but raised his head 

And strove to gasp his name, 

And those who could not speak nor stir, 

" God blessed him " just the same. 

For he was all the world to us. 

That hero gray and grim ; 

Right well he knew that fearful slope 

We'd climb with none but him. 

Though while his white head led the way 

We'd charge hell's portals in. 

This time we were not half way up, 
When 'midst the storm of shell. 
Our leader, with his sword upraised, 
Beneath our bay'nets fell. 
And as we bore him back, the foe 
Set up a joyous yell. 

Our hearts went with him. Back we swept ; 

And when the bugle said 

" Up, charge !" no man was there 

But hung his head. 

" We've no one left to lead us now," 

The sullen soldiers said. 



BAY BILLY. 101 



Just then, before the laggard line, 
The Colonel's horse we spied — 
Bay Billy, with his trappings on, 
His nostril swelling wide. 
As though still on his gallant back 
The master sat astride. 



Right royally he took the place 

That was of old his wont, 

And with a neigh, that seemed to say 

Above the battle's brunt, 

" How can the Twenty-second charge 

If I am not in front?" 

Like statues we stood rooted there, 

And gazed a little space, 

Above that floating mane we missed 

The dear, familiar face ; 

But we saw Bay Billy's eye of fire. 

And it gave us heart of grace. 

No bugle call could rouse us all 
As that brave sight had done ; 
Down all the battered line we felt 
A lightning impulse run ; 
Up, up the hill we followed Bill, 
And captured every gun ! 

And when upon the conquered height 
Died out the battle's hum, 
Vainly 'mid living and the dead 
We sought our leader dumb ; 
It seemed as if a specter steed. 
To win that day had come. 



102 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 



SAN BARTHOLOMEW. 

Mrs. T. T. Davis. 

France now approached the fearful crisis of the massacre of 
San Bartholomew. Anjoii, Angouleme, the Duke of Guise, and the 
queen mother stole from midnight mirth to midnight murder, one 
hour figuring in the mask of folly, the next in that of crime ; and 
as hilarious voices rang through echoing corridors and gorgeous 
salons, deep, bitter tones in an upper chamber breathed the doom 
of the revelers below. 

The fatal hour approached. It was Sunday eve and just six 
days after the royal marriage. The parts had been assigned. The 
players waited, in mute suspense, the signal stroke of the great 
clock of St. Germain I'Auxerrois. The secret council were 
assembled for the last time ; the plot was finished ; and with sup- 
pressed tones and furtive glances, they listened for the knell of 
death. The city lay hushed in that oppressive stillness which 
precedes the hurricane ; the victims in unsuspecting sleep ; the 
executioners on stealthy guard. 

Suddenly one deep vibration of the ponderous bell broke upon 
the silent air, followed by the sharp sound of a pistol ; and now, 
through all the quivering air, rang the tumult of the hosts of hell, 
— the discharge of fire-arms, the clang of bells, the shouts of the 
pursuers, the shrieks of the flying, the piteous cries of the wounded 
and dying. Mangled bodies fell heavily from the windows ; dis- 
severed limbs strewed the streets ; crimson streams hurried to 
crimson rivers. No innocence, no age found mercy. The dead 
soldiers floated down the Seine, side by side with the cradle of 
the living infant. Even childhood caught the mania of murder ; 
and the boy of ten years strangled the infant of as many months. 
Family feuds, the rivalries of love, the jealousies of peace, now 
found quick redress among the ranks. 

Sons shot the fathers who lived too long ; heirs claimed by the 
sword their tardy inheritance ; the discharge of a pistol would 



GARFIELD'S ASSASSINATION. 103 

liquidate a debt ; the stroke of a poniard Avould settle a disputed 

suit. 

Carts rumbling over the stones, freighted with the dying and 

the dead, encountered carts laden with the pillaged spoil. From 
I the windows of the Louvre, Charles the Ninth continually 
I howled " Kill ! kill ! " while Catherine with her maids of honor 
I laughed with ribald jests over the corpses of the gallant men 
I with whom they had danced and feasted a few hours before. 
j Woman's tenderness and man's humanity were alike palsied in 
j these orgies of the fiends. 

' Science furnished no shield; art no exemption. Goujon, the 
' " Correggio of Sculpture," was slain with the chisel in liis hand 

and his eye intent upon the half-carved statue. Ramus, the 
j learned philosopher who first dared to repudiate the doctrine of 

Aristotle, was found in his retreat by his rival Charpentier. 
' Ramus offered all his fortune as the price of his life. The ran- 
som was accepted ; but the bond was sealed with death. " Bleed! 

bleed," shouted Tavannes ; " bleeding is as good in August as in 

May." 

Seven days the unheeded sun glared on the carnival of terror; 

and seven nights the stars looked down upon the ghastly dead. 

And then the massacre was over. 



THE NEWS OF aARFIELD'S ASSASSINATION. 

Mary Clemmer Ames. 

Fifteen years ago, sailing on the James one tranquil morning, 
a great steamer rapidly passed, bearing on its front in enormous 
letters this sentence: "President Lincoln assassinated." Those 
letters, the boat, the morning, have never grown less alarmingly 
distinct. 

Last Saturday morning, sitting in a peaceful hillside orchard on 



104 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

South Mountain, that once fierce battle field of the republic, now 
flower-sown and golden with the harvests of a thousand homes, 
the stroke of horse's hoofs broke the silence of the unwonted 
road above my head; and looking up, a breathless boy leaning 
from his horse's neck looked down and shouted , " Garfield is 
shot." Instantly the black letters on the canvas of fifteen years 
before seemed to start from the background of my brain. I heard 
the very rush of the water under the moving boat — the two deeds 
seemed one. 

" The President shot !" That wild cry from a boy's mouth, up 
and down those solitary roads, how it penetrated the hearts of 
men whose strong arms were gathering in the harvests on those 
hill slopes, and the hearts of Avomen, toiling in those sequestered 
homes. 

There was many a solitary midnight ride that night where the 
man waited and waited the latest word from Hagerstown about 
the wounded President. In the village itself the days of the war 
were recalled. "I did not expect to live to see another war, 
but if President Garfield dies, I shall," exclaimed the viUage 
doctor who erst served in the rebel army. The acme of excite- 
ment was reached by this prognostication of impending war ; yet 
even that faded out in the sympathy spontaneously expressed by 
men, women, and children of every age and degree for the dying 
President. 

The inhabitants of the remotest farm-house seemed to know as 
perfectly the precise condition of the President as the favored 
reader of bulletins on Pennsylvania avenue fifty miles away. 
This was done by self-constituted courier boys who on horseback 
went for the dispatches sent from Hagerstown twelve miles dis- 
tant. " The President rested better last night." " The President 
will live." Such were the sentences that mounted boys and men 
sent down mountain pass and sequestered glen to the anxious 
faces peering from solitary, half-hidden farm-houses. 

Wlio, catching those potent sentences uttered in vibrating, sym- 



OLD HUNDRED. 105 

pathetic tones, piercing some fastness of nature, could fail to 
exclaim, " I have a country." Who could wait and listen for that 
thrilling word of weal or woe without realizing that the President, 
— whoever as man he might be — the President was near, dear, 
belonging to, and beloved by every man, woman, and cliild, how- 
soever remote, of the nation % 



"OLD HUNDRED." 

In a rustic old church, a company of worshipers are singing the 
old, old hymn : 

" Be Thou, God, exalted high !" 

the air is as old also — Old Hundred. 

If it be true that Luther composed that tune, and if the worship 
of mortals is carried on angels' wings to heaven ; how often has 
he heard the declaration, " They are singing '■ Old Hundred ' 
now." 

The solemn strain carries us back to the time of the Reformers : 
Luther and his devoted band. He, doubtless, was the first to 
strike the grand old chords in the public sanctuary of his own 
Germany. From his own stentorian lungs they rolled, vibrating 
not through vaulted cathedral roof, but along a grander arch, the 
eternal heavens. He wrought into each note his own sublime 
faith and stamped it with that faith's immortality. Hence it can- 
not die. Neither men nor angels will let it pass into oblivion. 

Can you find a tomb in the land where sealed lips lie that have 
not sung that tune ? If they were gray, old men, they had heard 
or sung Old Hundred. If they were babes, they smiled as their 
mothers rocked them to sleep singing Old Hundred. 

Sinner and saint have joined with the endless congregation 
where it has, with or without the pealing organ, sounded on 
sacred air 



106 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

The dear little cliildren, looking Tvith wondering eyes on this 
strange world, have lisped it. 

He whose manhood was devoted to the service of his God, and 
who with faltering steps ascended the pulpit stau*s, with white 
hand placed over his lahoring breast, loved Old Hundred. And 
though sometimes Ms lips only moved, away do^^^l in his heart, so 
soon to cease its throbs, the holy melody was sounding. The 
dear, white-headed father, with his tremulous voice, how he loved 
Old Hundred. Do you not see him now, sitting in the old arm- 
chair, his arms crossed over the top of his cane, and a tear per- 
chance stealing down his furrowed cheeks, as the noble strains 
ring out? Do you hear that thin, quivering, faltering sound, 
now bursting forth, now listened for almost in vain ? If you do 
not, we do ; and from such Kps, hallowed by four-score years' 
service in the Master's cause. Old Hundred sounds indeed a 
sacred melody. 

You may fill your churches with choirs, with Sabbath prima 
donnas, whose daring notes emulate the steeple and cost almost as 
much ; but give us the spirit-stirring tones of the Lutheran 
hymn, sung by young and old together. Martyrs have hallowed 
it ; it has gone up from the dying bed of the saints. The old 
churches, where generation after generation has worshiped, seem 
to breathe of Old Hundred from vestibule to tower-top ; the very 
air is haunted with its spirit. 

Old Hundred ! king of the sacred band of ancient airs, never 
shall our ears grow weary of hearing or our tongues of singing 
thee! And when we get to heaven, who knows but what the 
first triumphal strain that welcomes us may be : 

*' Be Thou, God, exalted high !" 



CURSE OF THE WELSH KING. 107 



CURSE OF THE WELSH KING ON THE SAXONS. 

Edward Bulwer Lytton. 

Monk, thou hast said ; and now hear the reply of the son of 
Llewellyn, the true heir of Roderic the Great, who from the 
heights of Eryri saw all the lands of the Cymrian sleeping under 
the dragon of Uther. King was I born ; and king will I die. I 
will not ride by the side of a Saxon to the feet of Edward, the 
son of the spoiler. I will not to purchase base life surrender the 
claim, vain before man and the hour, but solemn before God and 
posterity — the claim of my line and my people. 

All Britain is ours — all the Island of Pines ; and the children 
of Hengist are traitors and rebels, not the heirs of Ambrosius and 
Uther. Say to Harold the Saxon: "Ye have left us but the 
tomb of the Druid and the hills of the eagle ; but freedom and 
royalty are ours, in life and in death ; not for you to demand 
them; not for us to betray." 

Nor fear ye, 0, my chiefs ! few, but unmatched in glory and 
truth, fear not ye to perish by the hunger thus denounced as our 
doom, on these heights that command the fruits of our own fields. 
No ! die we may, but not mute and unavenged. 

Go back, whispering warrior ; go back, false son of the Cymry ; 
and tell Harold to look well to his walls and his trenches. We 
will vouchsafe him grace for his grace ; we will not take him by 
surprise nor under cloud of the night ; with the gleam of our 
swords and the clash of our shields we will come from the hill ; 
and, famine-worn as he deems us, hold a feast in his walls which 
the eagles of Snowdon spread their pinions to share. 

Monk ! do you curse me 1 Once, priest and monk went before 
us to inspire, not to daunt ; and our cry, " Alleluia " was taught us 
by the saints of the church, on the day when Saxons, fierce and 
many as Harold's, fell on the field of Maes Garmon. No ! the 
curse is on the head of the invader, not on those who defend altar 



108 FRANKLIN SPEAKER, 

and hearth. Yea, as the song to the bard, the cnrse leaps through 
my veins and rushes forth from my lips. 

By the land they have ravaged, by the gore they have spilt on 
these crags our last refuge, by the dark blood-stains below the 
cairn, on yon heights vrhere the dead stir to hear me ; I launch 
the curse of the wronged and the doomed on the children of 
Hengist. They, in turn, shall know the steel of the stranger ; 
their crown shall be shivered as glass, and their nobles be as 
slaves in the land. The line of Hengist and Cerdic shall be razed 
from the roll of empire ; and the ghosts of our fathers shall glide 
appeased over the graves of their nation. 

But we, we, though weak in the body, in the soul shall be 
strong to the last. The plowshare may pass over our cities ; but 
the soil shall be trod by our steps; and our deeds keep our 
language alive in the songs of our bards ; nor in the great judg- 
ment-day shall any race but the race of Cymry rise from their 
graves in this comer of earth, to answer for the sins of the brave. 



PENN'S MONUMENT. 

R. J. BURDFTTE. 

Born in stormy times, he walked amid troubled waters all his 
days. In an age of bitter persecution and unbridled wickedness 
he never wronged his conscience. A favored member of court 
where statesmanship was intrigue and trickery, where the highest 
morality was corruption, and whose austerity was venality, he 
never stained his hands with a bribe. Living under a government 
at war with the people, and educated in a school that taught tlie 
doctrine of passive obedience, his life-long dream was of popular 
government, of a State where the people ruled. 

In his early manhood, at the bidding of conscience, against the 
advice of his nearest friends, in opposition to stern paternal com- 



penn's monument. 109 

mands, against every dictate of worldly wisdom and human pru- 
dence, in spite of all the dazzling temptations of ambition so 
alluring to the heart of a young man, he turned away from the 
broad, fair highway to wealth, post, position, and distinction that 
the hands of a king opened before him, and casting his lot with 
the sect weakest and most unpopular in England, through paths 
that were tangled with trouble and lined with pitiless thorns of 
persecution, he walked into honor and fame and the reverence of 
the world, such as royalty coidd not promise and could not give 
him. 

In the land where he planted his model State, to-day no de- 
scendant bears his name. In the religious society for which he 
suffered banishment from home, persecution, and the prison, to- 
day no child of his blood and name walks in Christian fellowship 
nor stands uncovered in worship. His name has faded out of the 
living meetings of the Friends, out of the land that crowns his 
memory with sincerest reverence. Even the uncertain stone that 
would mark his grave stands doubtingly among the kindred ashes 
that hallow the ground where he sleeps. 

But his monument, grander than storied column of granite or 
noble shapes of bronze, is set in the glittering brilliants of mighty 
States between the seas. His noblest epitaph is v/ritten in the 
State that bears his honored name. The little town he planned 
to be his capital has become a city larger in area than any 
European capital he knew. Beyond his fondest dreams has grown 
the State he planted in the wilderness by " deeds of peace." Out 
of the gloomy mines that slept in rayless mystery beneath its 
mountains while he lived, the measureless wealth of his model 
State sparkles and glows on millions of hearthstones. From its 
forests of derricks and miles of creeping pipe-lines, the world is 
lighted from the State of Penn, with a radiance to which the 
sons of the founder's sons were blind. 

Eoaring blast and smoky forge and ringing hammer are tearing 
and beating the wealth of princes from his mines that the founder 



110 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

never knew. Clasping the continent, from sea to sea, stretches a 
chain of States as free as his o^vn ; from sunrise to sunset reaches 
a land where the will of the people is the supreme law, a land 
that never felt the pressure of a throne and never saw a scepter. 
And in the heart of the city that was his capital, in an old historic 
hall still stands the bell that first, in the name of the doctrines 
that he taught his colonists, proclaimed Hberty throughout the 
land and to all the inhabitants thereof. This is his monument ; 
and every noble charity gracing the State he founded is his 
epitaph. 



THE IIOTKEB'S JEWELiS. 



R. C. Tkexch. 



In schools of wisdom all the day was spent ; 

His steps at eve the rabbi homeward bent. 

With homeward thoughts which dwelt upon the wife 

And two fair children who adorned his life. 

She, meeting at the threshold, led him in. 
And with these words preventing did begin : 
" Ever rejoicing at your wished return. 
Yet do I most so now, for since the mom 
I have been much perplexed and sorely tried 
Upon one point, which you shall now decide : 

" Some years ago, a friend into my care 

Some jewels gave, — rich, precious gems they were ; 

And, having placed them in my charge, this friend 

Did after neither come for them nor send ; 

But left them in my keeping for so long, 

That now it almost seems to me a wrong 

That he should suddenly arrive to-day 

And take the jewels that he left away. 



THE TWO BANNERS OF AMERICA. Ill 

What think you ? Shall I freely yield them back, 
And with no murmuring % — so henceforth to lack 
Those gems myself, which I had learned to see 
Almost as mine for ever, — mine in fee." 

" What question can be here % Your own true heart 

Must needs advise you of the only part ; 

That may be claimed again which was but lent, 

And should be yielded with no discontent ; 

Nor surely, can w^e find herein a wrong 

That it was left us to enjoy so long." 

" Good is the word !" she answered, " may we now. 

And evermore, that it is good allow ! " 

And, rising, to an inner chamber led ; 

And there she showed him stretched upon one bed, 

Two children pale, — and he the jewels knew 

Which God had lent him, and resumed anew. 



THE TWO BANNERS OF AMERICA. 

Herrick Johnson. 

It makes the blood tingle and the cheeks glow to read how 
men have gone into battle under the inspiration of the "red, 
white, and blue." It is enough to make the nation weep for joy, 
their devotion to the dear old flag ; " Old Glory," they call it. 

I saw a young sergeant in the hospital at Fredericksburg. He 
was dying there w^ith the " stars and stripes " about him ; arms, 
haversacks, canteen, blanket, all Avere lost ; but he had clung to 
" Old Glory." His lips moved : we stooped to listen. He was 
making his last charge : " Come on, boys ! our country and our flag 
forever ; " and wrapped in stars he went up among the stars. 

Lift aloft then the "star-spangled banner." " For ever float that 
standard sheet." Unfurl it to the breeze that every zephyr may 



112 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

kiss the sacred folds, red with the blood of God's heroes, white 
with God's justice, and blue with heaven's own azure. Bear it 
onward and onward, 0, braves of a free people ! until over the 
whole vast extent of liberty's soil shall again be seen " the gor- 
geous ensign of the Republic, once more full high advanced." 

I believe that God has made this whole land a cradle of liberty ; 
and is rocking, rocking it to and fro, to and fro, with omnipotent 
arms ; and as the nations hear the thunder of that rocking, we 
pray God that it may never cease until liberty shall need rocking 
no more in her cradle, but shall stand up, fair and young and 
strong, true liberty, liberty for the body and liberty for the soul, 
and shall walk as a queen through the land, the daughter of our 
Christianity, nursling of God and America. 

Yet above the banner of the Constitution, above the banners of 
the American soldiers and sailors, above even the " stars and 
stripes," high over all, let us raise the banner of the cross, that 
we and the world may read its sacred motto : " Immanuel— God 
with us." 

And then, with the mystic cords of memory stretching from 
every battle field and patriot grave, to every living heart and 
hearth-stone over all this broad land, swelling again the chorus of 
the Union, we shall go on, giving light to the nations and liberty 
to man and honor to God. 



CHURCH AND STATE. 

T. B. Macaulay. 

The ark of God was never taken till it was surrounded by the 
arms of earthly defenders. In captivity its sanctity was sufficient 
to vindicate it from insult, and to lay the hostile fiend prostrate on 
the threshold of his own temple. The real security of Christianity 
is to be found in its benevolent morahty, in its exquisite adapta- 
tion to the human heart, in the facility w^ith which its scheme 
accommodates itself to the capacity of every human intellect, in 



now TO ASK AND HAVE. 113 

j the consolation which it bears to every house of mourning, in the 

I light with which it brightens the great mystery of the grave. 

j To such a system it can bring no addition of dignity or strength, 

■ that is part and parcel of the common law. It is not now for the 

first time left to rely on the force of its own evidences, and the 

j attractions of its own beauty. Its sublime theology confounded 

I the Grecian schools in the fair conflict of reason with reason. The 

j bravest and wisest of the Caesars found their arms and their policy 

unavailing, when opposed to the weapons that were not carnal, 

I and the kingdom that was not of this world. The victory Por- 

I phyry and Diocletian failed to gain, is not, to all appearance, 

reserved for any of those who have in this age, directed their 

attacks against the last restraint of the powerful, and the last hope 

of the wretched. 

The whole history of Christianity shows that she is in far 
greater danger of being corrupted by the alliance of power than 
of being crushed by its opposition. Those who thrust temporal 
sovereignty upon her, treat her as their prototypes treated her 
Author. They bow the knee, and spit upon her; they cry, 
"Hail !" and smite her on the cheek ; they put a scepter in her 
hand, but it is a fragile reed ; they crown her, but it is with 
thorns ; they cover with purple the wounds which their own 
hands have inflicted on her ; and inscribe magnificent titles over 
the cross on which they have fixed her to perish in ignominy and 
pain. 



HOW TO ASK AND HAVE. 

Samuel Lover. 
" Oh ! 'tis time I should talk to your mother, 

Sweet Mary, says I ; 
" Oh ! don't talk to my mother," says Mary, 

Beginning to cry; 



114 FRANKLIN SPEAKEE. 

" J^or my mother says men are deceivers, 
And never, I know, will consent ; 

She says girls in a hurry who marry 
At leisure repent." 

" Then suppose I should talk to your father, 

Sweet ]\Iary," says I ; 
" Oh ! don't talk to my father," says Mary, 

Beginning to cry ; 
" For my father he loves me so dearly, 

He'll never consent I should go — 
If you talk to my father," says Mary, 

" He'U surely say 'Xo.'" 

" Then how shaU I get you, my jewel 1 

Sweet Mary," says I; 
" If your father and mother's so cruel. 

Most surely rU die!" 
" Oh ! never say ' die,' dear," says Mary ; 

" A way now to save you I see ; 
Since my parents are both so conthrairy — 

You'd better ask me." 



IRE3LAND UNCONQTJEKED. 



English liistory assures us that in the latter half of the twelfth 
century Henry the Second of England conquered Ireland. In 
this latter half of the nineteenth century English gold flows like 
water, and English soldiers are mustered by thousands to keep 
down the descendants of those conquered Celts of seven centuries 
ago. 

Strongbow did not conquer Ireland ; Cromwell did not conquer 
Ireland. They trampled her down to rise again and again and 



IRELAND UXCONQUERED. 115 

yet again. Irishmen there have been who held place and power 
in the English court ; Irishmen by scores of thousands have helped 
to fight, aye ! have fought England's battles ; but as a people, the 
Irish hate the English to-day as deeply and fervently as the Celt 
hated the Sassenach seven hundred years ago. Wolfe Tone, 
1 Emmet, Meagher, O'Brien, Mitchel, have evinced in later years 
how Ireland was conquered. 

All means have failed : force, persecution, cajolery, intrigue, 
police. Ah ! but has conciliation failed ? England has never 
I truly tried conciliation ; she has never granted Ireland the right 
to make her own laws, elect her own magistrates, support her own 
church. So long as Englishmen own the land which the Irish- 
man tills for the Englishman's profit, as Englishmen make the 
laws which Irishmen are proscribed for daring to question, as the 
English church forces unwilling tribute for services in which the 
Irish do not and cannot join, so long, in short, as Englishmen are 
masters, and Irishmen are slaves, all means will fail. For the 
centuries to come as for the centuries past, generation will receive 
from generation the legacy of hatred for the oppressor. There 
will be smouldering fire in the popular heart ; and fierce irruptions 
now and then — " White Boys " and " Young Irishmen " and 
" Fenians," — to be crushed only by labor and money and blood. 
But is it not folly, madness for a people thus to strive 1 — to strive 
against power and wealth and position and seven centuries of suc- 
cessful oppression ? Humanly speaking, yes ; but God will not 
always withhold His arm. 

Irish nationality, existing to-day only in song of pathos and 

speech of fire and in the hearts of a downtrodden people, may 

yet become a living reality, a fulfillment of the prophecies of olden 

bards and the hopes and prayers and longings of later patriots. 

Hungary, robbed of her ancient rights, trampled and spoiled by the 

! power of bayonets, crushed in her efi'ort for freedom by an alliance 

I of despots, is yet, at last, in God's ruling, free Hungary once more 

I with her olden constitution and parliament and privileges and a 



116 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

king, — Austrian though he be — crowned with ancient and honored 
rites at Pesth. 

It may not be by battle and blood, but the resurrection of Ire- 
land from the grave of foreign oppression will surely come. 



DANGERS TO OUR REPUBLIC. 

Horace Mann. 

Who are this host of voters crowding to use the freeman's 
right at the ballot-box ? In all the dread catalogue of mortal sins, 
there is not one but, in that host, there are hearts which have 
willed and hands which have perpetrated it. 

The gallows has spared its victims, the prison has released its 
tenants ; from dark cells, where malice had brooded, where re- 
venge and robbery had held their nightly rehearsals, the leprous 
multitude is disgorged, and comes up to the ballot-box to fore- 
doom the destinies of this nation. 

But look again, at that deep and dense array of ignorance, 
whose limits the eye cannot discover. Its van leans against us 
here, its rear is beyond the distant hills. They, too, in this hour 
of their country's peril, have come up to turn the folly of which 
they are not conscious into measures which they cannot un- 
derstand, by votes which they cannot read. I^ay, more, and 
worse ! for, from the ranks of crime, emissaries are sallying forth 
towards the ranks of ignorance, shouting the war-cries of faction, 
and flaunting banners with lying symbols, such as cheat the eye of 
a mindless brain ; and thus the hosts of crime are to lead on the 
hosts of ignorance in their assault upon Liberty and Law ! 

What now shall be done to save the citadel of freedom, where 
are treasured all the hopes of posterity 1 Or, if we can survive 
the peril of such a day, what shall be done to prevent the next 
generation from sending forth still more numerous hordes, afflicted 
with deeper blindness and incited by darker depravity % 



brougham's attack upon canning. 117 

ll 

' Are there any here who would counsel us to save the people 
I from themselves, by wrestmg from their hands this formidable 
i right of ballot ? Better for the man who would propose this 
I remedy to an infuriated multitude, that he should stand in the 

I lightning's path as it descends from heaven to earth. 

II And answer me this question, you who would re-conquer for the 
few the power which has been won by the many — you who would 
disfranchise the common mass of mankind, and recondemn them to 

I become helots and bondmen and feudal serfs, — tell me, were they 
I again in the power of your castes, would you not again neglect 
' them, again oppress them, again make them slaves % 

Better that these blind Samsons, in the wantonness of their 
gigantic strength, should tear down the pillars of the Republic, 
than that the great lesson which Heaven for six thousand years, 
has been teaching to the world, should be lost upon it, — the lesson 
that the intellectual and moral nature of man is the one thing 
precious in the sight of God, and therefore that, until this nature 
is cultivated and enlightened and purified, neither opulence nor 
power nor learning nor genius nor domestic sanctity nor the holi- 
ness of God's altars, can ever be safe. 

Until the immortal and godlike capacities of every being that 
comes into the world are deemed more worthy, are watched more 
tenderly than any other things, no dynasty of men or form of 
government can stand or shall stand upon the face of the earth ; 
and the force or the fraud which would seek to uphold them shall 
be but "as fetters of flax to bind the flame." 



BROUGHAM'S ATTACK UPON CANNINa. 

Though Brougham and Canning resembled each other in stand- 
ing foremost and alone in their respective parties, they were, in 
every other respect, opposed as the zenith and the nadir or as 
light and darkness. This difl'erence extended even to their per- 
sonal appearance. Canning was airy, open, and j^repossessing ; 



118 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

Brougham seemed stern, hard, lowering, and ahnost repulsive. 
The whole form of Canning was rounded, smooth, and graceful ; 
that of Brougham, angular, long, and awkward. From Canning 
there was expected the glitter of wit and the flow of spirit, some- 
thing elegant and showy. Brougham stood up as a being whose 
powers and intentions were all a mystery ; whose aim and effect 
no hving man could divine. 

Such were the rival orators who sat glancing defiance at each 
other during the early part of the session of 1823 ; Brougham, as 
if wishing to overthrow the secretary by a sweeping accusation of 
having abandoned all principle for the sake of office; and the 
secretary ready to parry the charge and attack in his turn. An 
opportunity at length off'ered. 

The oration of Brougham was, at the outset, disjointed and 
ragged and apparently without aim or application. He careered 
over the whole annals of the world, and collected every instance 
in wliich genius had degraded itself at the footstool of power or 
in which principle had been sacrificed for the vanity or lucre of 
place ; but still there was no allusion to Canning and no connec- 
tion, that ordinary men could discover, with the business before 
the house. AMien, however, he had collected every material 
which suited his purpose, Avhen the mass had become big and black, 
he bound it about and about with the cords of illustration and 
argument; when its union was secure, he swimg it round and 
round with the strength of a giant and the rapidity of a whirlwind, 
in order that its impetus and effect might be more tremendous ; 
and, while doing this, he ever and anon glared liis eye and pointed 
his finger to make the aim and the direction sure. 

Canning himself was the first Avho seemed to be aware where 
and how terrible was to be the collision ; and he kept 'writhing 
his body in agony and rolling his eyes in fear, as if anxious to find 
some shelter from the impending bolt. The house soon caught 
the impression ; and every man in it was glancing his eye fear- 
fully, first towards the orator and then towards the secretary. 



I JOAN OF ARC. 119 

j 

j There was, — save the voice of Brougham, which growled in that 

I undertone of thunder which is so perfectly audible — a silence, as 

I if the angel of retribution had been opening, in the faces of all 

' parties, the scroll of their private lives. A pen which one of the 

I secretaries had dropped upon the matting, was heard in the re- 

! motest part of the house. The stiffness of Brougham's figure had 

vanished ; his features seemed concentrated almost to a point ; he 

glanced towards every part of the house in succession and sounded 

the death knell of the secretary's forbearance and prudence. 

With both his clinched hands upon the table, he hurled at him 



an accusation more dreadful in its gall and more torturing in its 
efifects than ever had been hurled at mortal man within the same 
walls. The result was instantaneous ; was electric ; it was as 
when the thunder-cloud descends upon some giant peak — one 
flash, one peal — the sublimity vanished; and all that remained 
was a small pattering of rain. 

Canning started to his feet, and was able to utter only the un- 
guarded words, "It is false." 



JOAN OF ARC AND THE BISHOP OF BEAUVAIS. 

Thomas De Quincey. 

Bishop of Beauvais ! thy victim died in fire upon the scaffold ; 
thou upon a downy bed. But for the departing minutes of life 
both are oftentimes alike. At the farewell crisis, when the gates 
di death are opening, and flesh is resting from its struggles, often- 
times the tortured and the torturer have the same truce from car- 
aal torment ; both sink together into sleep ; together both some- 
jbimes kindle into dreams. 

When the mortal mists were gathering fast upon you two, 
bishop and shepherd-girl, when the pavilions of life were closing 
|ap their shadowy curtains about you, let us try, through the gigan- 
jiic glooms, to decipher the flying features of your separate visions. 
! The shepherd-girl that had delivered France, she from her 



120 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

dungeon, she from her baiting at the stake, she from her duel 
Avith fire, as she entered her last dream, saw Domremy, saw the 
fountain of Domremy, saw the pomp of forests in which her child- 
hood had wandered. That Easter festival which man had denied 
to her languishing heart, that resurrection of spring-time which ! 
the darkness of dungeons had intercepted from her, hungering ; 
after the glorious liberty of forests, were, by God, given back into ' 
her hands. With them, perhaps, was given back to her the bliss ' 
of childhood. The storm was weathered. The blood that she was ' 
to reckon for had been exacted ; the tears that she was to shed 
in secret had been paid to the last. In her last fight upon the 
scaffold she had triumphed gloriously ; victoriously she had tasted 
the stings of death. For all, except this comfort from her fare- 
well dream, she had died — died amidst the tears of ten thousand 
enemies — died amidst the drums and trumpets of armies — died 
amidst peals redoubling upon peals, volleys upon volleys from the 
saluting clarions of martyrs. 

Bishop of Beauvais ! I know that you also, entering upon 
your final dream, saw Domremy. That fountain showed itself tor 
your eyes in pure morning dews ; but neither Hews nor the holy 
dawn could cleanse away the bright spots of innocent blood upon 
its surface. AYhat a tumult ! what a gathering of feet is there ! 
In glades where only the Avild deer should run, armies and nations 
are assembling ; towering in the fluctuating crowd are phantoms 
that belong to departed hours. There is the great English Prince, 
Regent of France ; there is my Lord of Winchester, the princely 
Cardinal who died and made no sign ; there is the Bishop of ^ 
Beauvais. 

What building is that which hands so rapidly are raising ?l 
Will they burn the child of Domremy the second time ? !N"o. It 
is a tribunal that rises to the clouds ; and two nations stand 
around it waiting for a trial. Shall my Lord of Beauvais sit^ 
again upon the judgment-seat, and again number the hours for 
the innocent 1 Ah no ! He is the prisoner at the bar. My Lord,. 



•1 



THE PLEASANT DAYS OF OLD. 121 

have you no counsel ? Who is this that cometh from Domremy ? 
Who is she that cometh in bloody coronation-robes from Rheims ? 
Who is she that cometh with blackened flesh from walking the 
furnace of Rouen 1 This is she, the shepherd-girl, counselor that 
had none for herself, whom I choose, Bishop, for yours. She it 
is that would plead for you ; yes. Bishop, she, when heaven and 
earth are silent. 



THE PLEASANT DAYS OF OLD. 

Fkances Brown. 

O, THE pleasant days of old, which so often people praise ! 
True, they wanted all the luxuries that grace our modern days ; 
Bare floors were strewn with rushes, the walls let in the cold ; 
O, how they must have shivered in those pleasant days of old ! 

O, those ancient lords of old, how magnificent they were ! 

They threw down and imprisoned kings, — to thwart them who 

might dare ] 
They ruled their serfs quite sternly ; they took from Jews their 

gold,— 
Above both law, and equity were those great lords of old ! 

0, the gallant knights of old, for their valor so renowned ! 

With sword and lance and armor strong they scoured the country 

round ; 
And whenever aught to tempt them they met by wood or wold. 
By right of sword they seized the prize, — those gallant knights of 

old! 

0, the gentle dames of old ! who, quite free from fear or pain. 

Could gaze on joust and tournament, and see their champions 

I slain ; 

They lived on good beefsteak and ale, which made them strong 

1 and bold, — 

iO, more like men than women were those gentle dames of old ! 



122 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

0, those mighty towers of old ! with their turrets, moat, and keep, 
Their battlements and bastions, their dungeons dark and deep ! 
Full many a baron held his court within the castle hold ; 
And many a captive languished there, in those strong towers of 
old! 

0, those troubadours of old ! with the gentle minstrelsie 

Of hope and joy, or deep despair, whiche'er their lot might be ; 

For years they served their ladye-loves ere they their passions 

told,— 
0, wondrous patience must have had those troubadours of old ! 

0, those blessed times of old, with their chivalry and state ! 
I love to read their clironicles, which such brave deeds relate ; 
I love to sing their ancient rhymes, to hear their legends told, — 
But Heaven be thanked ! I live not in those blessed times of old. 



ADDRESS TO THE ROMANS IN 1866. t 

G. Mazzini. 

I KNOW not what you may intend to do under the present cir- 
cumstances ; but I know what you ought to do, and I take upon 
myself to tell you. I, once a triumvir of Rome, now gray-headed 
but not gray-souled, have preserved incontaminate the faith which 
we in 1849, united and strong in will, announced to Italy from 
the Capitol. 

Romans must not be cowards ; they must not be suspected of : ; 
cowardice. "What should be the cry with you as you rise to arms ?:|^ 
what your programme? You answered this question eighteen ; 
years ago. You have not now to choose, you have chosen. On 
the ninth of February, 1849, then free and legally represented, 
you unanimously declared yours the cry that gave your forefathers 
their greatness, and summed up the programme of Rome in the 
word — Republic. That programme, accepted with enthusiasm by 



ADDRESS TO THE ROMANS. 133 

jail the provinces then belonging to Rome, was sealed by the 
' blood of the best among you during two months of heroic struggle 
j in Rome, Bologna, and Ancona. 

On the second of July the free expression of your will and of 
I your right was put down by brute force. That obstacle is now 
removed. The manifestation of your will recommences at the 
point where it was interrupted. Your eternal right revives. By 
rising now, you are what you were on the ninth of February — 
I Republicans and your own masters. On the third of July, one 
!i day after the entrance of the French, the Roman people, in the 
I face of its enemies, once more raised its hand in affirmation of its 
faith ; the Republican constitution was read aloud to the multi- 
tude from the Capitol. The foreign flag was interposed to veil from 
Italy the hand that held the pact aloft. That veil is rent asunder ; 
and the hand of the Roman people re-appears raised on high. 

This is the programme pointed out to you by honor, conscience, 
and duty toward the past and to the future. You are bound, 
before all things, to re-assert yourselves, your own life, your own 
power. That done, you will act as God and your sense of national 
duty inspire. First exist ; then dispose of yourselves. Then and 
then only, when your vote may go forth powerful in collective 
inspiration and enlightened by the counsels of your best men, you 
will decide whether Rome ought to give itself, like a secondary 
city disinherited of all life, to a monarchy already doomed, proved 
impotent and incapable of all noble action — a monarchy which 
has accepted Venice as an alms from the foreigner and would 
inscribe Lissa and Custozza upon the Capitol; or whether the 
tradition, glorious beyond all others of the past, and that mis- 
sion which has twice given moral and material unity to the world, 
do not call her to a part nobler, worthier, and more fruitful of 
glory to the nation. 



12i FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 



WHAT IS A MINORITY? 

John B. GtOUGh. 

What is a minority ? The chosen heroes of this earth have 
been in a minority. There is not a social, political, or religious 
privilege that you enjoy to-day that was not bought for you by 
the blood and tears and patient sufferings of the minority. It is 
the minority that have vindicated humanity in every struggle. It 
is a minority that have stood in the van of every moral conflict, 
and achieved all that is noble in the history of the world. 

You will find that each generation has always been busy in 
gathering up the scattered ashes of the martyred heroes of the 
past, to deposit them in the golden urn of a nation's history. 
Look at Scotland, where they are erecting monuments — to whom ? ; 
To the Covenanters. Ah, they were in a minority ! Read their j 
history, if you can, without the blood tingling to the tips of your ■ 
fingers. These were the minority, that, through blood and tears j 
and bootings and scourgings, — dyeing the waters with their blood, | 
and staining the heather with their gore, — fought the glorious ; 
battle of religious freedom. 

Minority ! If a man stand up for the right, though he eat, with 
the right and truth, a wretched crust ; if he walk with obloquy i 
and scorn in the by-lanes and streets, while the falsehood and | 
wrong rufHe it in silken attire, let him remember that wherever the ! 
right and truth are, there are ahvays 

" Troops of beautiful, tall angels " 

gathered round him; and God Himself stands within the dim 
future and keeps watch over His o^^^l ! If a man stands for the 
right and the truth, though every man's finger be pointed at liim, 
though every woman's lip be curled at him in scorn, he stands in 
a majority ; for God and good angels are with him ; and greater 
are they that are for him than all they that be against him. 



HOW WE KEPT THE DAT. 125 



HOW WE KEPT THE DAY. 

Will Caeleton. 

The great procession came up the street, 
With clatter of hoofs and tramp of feet ; 
There was General Jones to guide the van 
And Corporal Jinks, his right-hand man ; 
And each was riding his high horse, 
And each had epaulets, of course ; 
And each had a sash of the bloodiest red, 
And each had a shako on his head ; 
And each had a sword by his left side, 
And each had his mustache newly dyed ; 

And that was the w^ay 

We kept the day. 
That gave us — 

Hurray ! Hurray ! Hurray ! 
(With a battle or two, the histories say,) 

Our National Independence ! 
The great procession came up the street. 
With loud da capo and brazen repeat ; 
There was Hans, the leader, a Teuton born, 
A sharp who worried the E-flat horn ; 
And Baritone Jake, and Alto Mike, 
Who never played any thing twice alike ; 
And Tenor Tom, of conservative mind. 
Who always came out a note behind ; 
And Dick, whose tuba was seldom dumb. 
And Bob, who punished the big bass drum. 
And when they stopped a minute to rest. 
The martial band discoursed its best ; 
The ponderous drum and the pointed fife 
Proceeded to roll and shriek for life ; 
And Bonaparte Crossed the Rhine, anon. 



126 FRAXKLIX SPEAKER, 

And The Girl I Left Behind Me came on 



And that was the way 

The band did play, 
On the loud, high-toned, harmonious day. 
That gave us — 

Hurray ! Hurray ! Hurray ! 
(With some music of bullets, our sires would say,) 
Our glorious Independence ! 

The great procession came up the street, 

"With a wagon of virgins, sour and sweet ; 

Each bearing the bloom of recent date, 

Each ?wi6Tepresenting a single State. 

There was California, pious and prim, 

And Louisiana, humming a hymn ; 

The Texas lasa was the smallest one — 

Rhode Island weighed the tenth of a ton ; 

The Empire State was pure as a pearl, 

And Massachusetts a modest girl ; 
Vermont was red as the blush of a rose — 
And the goddess sported a turn-up nose ; 
And looked, free sylph, where she painfully sat, 
The worlds she would give to be out of that. 
And in this way 
The maidens gay 
Flashed up the street on the beautiful day, 
That gave us — 

Hurray ! Hurray ! Hurray ! 
(With some sacrifices, our mothers would say,) 
Our glorious Independence ! 

The eager orator took the stand. 

In the cause of our great and happy land ; 

He aired his own political views, 



HOW WE KEPT THE DAY, 127 

He told us all of the latest news : 

How the Boston folks one night took tea — 

Their grounds for steeping it in the sea ; 

What a heap of Britons our fathers did kill, 

At the little skirmish of Bunker Hill ; 

He put us all in anxious doubt 

As to how that matter was coming out ; 

And when at last he had fought us through 

To the bloodless year of '82, 

'Twas the fervent hope of every one 

That he, as well as the war, was done. 

But he continued to painfully soar 

For something less than a century more ; 

Until at last he had fairly begun 

The wars of eighteen-sixty-one ; 

And never rested till 'neath the tree 

That shadowed the glory of Robert Lee ; 

And then he inquired, wdth martial frown, 

"Americans, must we go down?" 
And, as an answer from heaven were sent, 
The stand gave way, and down he went. 
A singer or two beneath him did drop — 
A big fat alderman fell atop ; 

And that was the way 

Our orator lay 
Till we fished him out, on the eloquent day, 
That gave us — 

Hurray! Hurray! Hurray! 
(With a clash of arms, Pat. Henry would say,) 

Our wordy Independence ! 

The people went home through the sultry night, 
In a murky mood and a pitiful plight ; 
Not more had the rockets' sticks gone down, 



128 FRANKLIN SPEAKER, 

Than the spirits of them who had " been to town ;" 

Not more did the fire-balloon collapse, 

Than the pride of them who had known mishaps. 

There w^ere feathers ruffled, and tempers roiled, 

And several bran-new dresses spoiled ; 

There were hearts that ached from envy's thorns, 

And feet that twinged with trampled corns ; 

There were joys proved empty through and through. 

And several purses empty, too ; 

And some reeled homeward, muddled and late, 

Who hadn't taken their glory straight ; 

And some were fated to lodge, that night, 

In the city lock-up, snug and tight ; 

And that w^as the way 

The deuce was to pay. 
As it always is at the close of the day, 
That gave us — 

Hurray ! Hurray ! Huiray ! 
(With some restrictions, the fault-finders say,) 
That which, please God, we will keep for aye — 

Our National Independence ! 



CLOSE OF THE BATTLE OF WATERLOOo 

Victor Hugo. 

Let us go back and place ourselves in the year 1815. The 
scene is the battle field of Waterloo, the strangest encounter of 
history ; classic war taking her revenge ; genius vanquished by 
calculation; Wellington against Xapoleon. Here for hours two 
magnificent armies, artillery and infantry, lancers and cuirassiers, 
the veterans of the world were hurled madly together. At length 
Blucher arriving, the whole Enghsh army swept forward irresistibly 
to the final assault. 

The Imperial Guard felt the army of France slipping away 



BATTLE OF WATERLOO, 129 



I around them in the gloom and the vast overthrow of the rout. 
■ Still symmetrical, drawn up in line, calm in the smoke of that 
j conflict, the prestige of a hundred victories on their banners, they 
.held on their course, battered more and more, dying faster and 
j faster at every step. 

A few squares of them, immovable in the flow of the rout as 
rocks in running water, held out until night. Night approaching 
and death also, they awaited this double shadow, and yielded 
unfaltering to its embrace. Towards nine o'clock in the evening, 
I at the foot of the plateau, there remained but one. 
I In this fatal valley, at the bottom of that slope which had 
been climbed by the cuirassiers under the converging fire of the 
victorious artillery of the enemy, amid a frightful storm of pro- 
jectiles this square fought on. It was commanded by an obscure 
officer whose name was Cambronne. At every discharge the 
I square grew less, but returned the fire. It replied to grape by 
buUets, narrowing in its four walls continually. Afar off", the 
fugitives, stopping for a moment to take breath, heard in the 
darkness this dismal thunder decreasing. 

Wlien the legion was reduced to a handful, when their flag was 
reduced to a shred, when their muskets, exhausted of ammunition, 
were reduced to nothing but clubs, when the pile of corpses was 
larger than the groups of the living, there spread among the con- 
querors a sort of sacred terror about these sublime martyrs ; and 
the English artillery stopping to take breath was silent. It was a 
kind of respite. These combatants had about them a swarm of 
specters — the outlines of men on horseback, the black profile of 
the cannons, the white sky seen through the wheels and the gun 
carriages— the colossal death's head which heroes always see in 
the smoke of battle, was advancing upon them and glaring at 
them. They could hear in the gloom of the twilight the loading 
of the pieces ; the lighted matches, like tigers' eyes in the night, 
made a circle about their heads. 

All the linstocks of the English batteries approached the guns, 



130 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

! 
when, touched by their heroism, holding the death moment sus- : 
pended over these men, an English general cried to them, " Brave 
Frenchmen ! Surrender ! " Cambronne answered, " Fudge ! " To 
make this answer to disaster ; to say this to destiny ; to fling '. 
down this reply at the rain of the previous night, at the treach- 
erous wall of Hougomont, at the sunken road of Ohain, at the. 
delay of Grouchy, at the arrival of Bliicher; to be ironical in the; 
sepulcher is immense. 

This unknown soldier, Cambronne, this infinitesimal of war, ] 
feels that there is a lie in a catastrophe doubly bitter. And at a - 
moment when he is bursting with rage, he is offered this mockery \ 
— life ! How can he restrain himself ? They are there, — all the . 
kings of Europe, the fortunate generals, the thundering Jove. - 
They have a hundred thousand victorious soldiers, and behind the 
hundred thousand, a million ; their guns, with matches lighted, are 
agape ; they have the Imperial Guard and the Grand Army under 
their feet ; they have crushed Xapoleon, and Cambronne only 
remains. /: 

To this word of Cambronne the English voice replied — " Fire."' 
The batteries flamed ; the hills trembled ; from all those bmzen 
throats Avent forth a final vomiting of grape terrific. A vast 
smoke, dusky white in the light of the rising moon, rolled out ; : 
and when the smoke was dissipated, there was nothing left. ^ 
That formidable remnant was annihilated; the Old Guard was-: 
dead. 



AGRIPPINA-THE GREAT EMPRESS. 

SCHELE DE VeRE. 

Far from imperial Rome, on the banks of the Ehine, where 
the swift waters of the Moselle bring their deep green tribute to 
the great river, Agrippina had been born in the midst of her 
father's legions. The life thus begun amid the symbols of power 
and tokens of strife, passed on through strange alternations of 



' AGRIPPINA. 131 

I 

ineglected exile and successful plots to a sadly, terribly tragic 
lend. 

Agrippina craved power — ever more power — for her family, 
;for herself, for her son. 

She received homage as the sister of an emperor ; she would be 
(the wife of an emperor — her intrigue had succeeded ; her fascinat- 
ing rival, whom the emperor loved, lay dead in her beauty, and 
jthe throne of Claudius was ready to receive Agrippina. But what 
ja thione ! its hangings were dripping with the blood of innocent 
i victims; hidden horrors lurked under every fold and fringe, and 
I the vast halls of the palace in which it stood were peopled with 
the ghosts of murdered victims, through whose pale ranks alone 
the way was open to the seat of the Caesars. 

In this grand structure on the Palatine every room had its 
fearful record. Here was the passage in which Caligula was cut 
to pieces ; there, lower down, the dungeon where Drusus died, 
loading Tiberius with curses ; in that superb hall Britannicus was 
poisoned ; and through that open colonnade had been carried the 
countless corpses of men dispatched on the instant, at the master's 
bidding. Yet there lived a woman so bold in her aspirations, so 
determined in her purposes, that, although she knew all this and 
far more than the world has ever learned of the terrible secrets of 
that palace, she vowed in her heart that she would sit on that 
throne, dwelling in the midst of those horrors and defying the 
enmity of men and the wrath of the gods alike. 

She kept her vow ; and amid the glory of her imperial state, 
with unsated ambition she plotted to win the last object of her 
craving, — the name and power of Caesar for her son. Murder and 
money again played their parts, guided by cunning brain and 
resolute, unfaltering will — Claudius dead, buried, deified, her son 
ruled over Eome. She had paid a great and bitter price ; but she 
had won. 

But the end was not then ; a bitterer price must close the 
reckoning. Her ambition and her crimes had made her feared ; 



132 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

and the monster son would rid the imperial councils of the ^earfulji 
mother whom he dreaded. \ 

As the assassin entered her chamber, she made a last effort to, 
stay the blow by overawing the murderer. " If you come," she^ 
said, " to inquire after my well-being, you may tell the emperor 
that I am well ; if you come to murder me, I will not believe that 
you come from him; the guilt of a parricide is unknown to his( 
heart." But she received no answer; she was to hear the voice i 
of man no more. The commander drew his sword. Lying pros-- 
trate before him, she quietly said: " Strike the womb that bore 
a monster ! " and received the death blow. : 

Thus died by ignoble hands the sister of Caligula, wife of Clau- 
dius, mother of l^ero, the greatest empress Rome has ever known, 
fulfilling the fearful prophecy she- had uttered in insufferable pride 
at the birth of her son, " Let him slay me, so he reign." i 



HUMAN PBOaHESS. ! 

Wm. Morley Phnshon. 

God is working in the world, and therefore there shall be prog- 
ress forever. God's purpose doth not languish. Through a past 
of disaster and struggle, " Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong 
forever on the throne," through centuries of persecution, Avith 
oppressors proud and with confessors faithless, amid multitudes 
apostate and shame-hearted, with only here and there an Abdiel, 
brave, but single-handed — God has been always working, evolving, [ 
in His quiet power, from the seeming the real, from the false the 
true. 

Xot for nothing blazed the martyr's fires — not for nothing toiled 
brave sufferers up successive hills of shame. God's purpose doth 
not languish. The torture and trial of the past have been the 
stern plowers in His service, who never suspended their husbandry, 
and who have "made long their furrows." Into those furrows 



r 

i 

I 

I DOOM OF SALATHIEL. 133 

! 

i the imperishable seed hath fallen*. The heedless world hath 
' trodden it in ; tears and blood have watered it ; the patient sun 
j hath warmed and cheered it to its ripening ; and it shall be ready 
: soon. " Say not ye, there are yet four months, and then cometh 
j harvest ! Lift up your eyes," and yonder, upon the crest of the 
j mountain, the lone watcher, the prophet with the shining fore- 
head, looking out upon God's acres, announces to the waiting 
j people — "The fields are white unto the harvest; thrust in the 
I sickle, for the harvest is ripe." 

I But the Lord wants reapers. Who of you will go out, sickle 

I in hand, to meet Him ? The harvest is ripe ; shall it droop in 

heavy and neglected masses for want of reapers to gather it in ? 

To you, the young, in your enthusiasm — to you, the aged, in your 

wisdom — to you, men of enterprise and ardor — to you, heirs of the 

rarest endurance, and affection of womanhood — to you, the rich in 

i the grandeur of your equalizing charity — to you, the poor, in the 

' majesty of your ungrudging labor, the Master comes and speaks. 

Does not the whisper thrill you ? " Why stand ye here all the 

day idle f 

Up, there's work for you all— work for the lord of broad acres, 
work for the king of two hands. Ye are born, all of you, to a 
royal birthright. Scorn not the poor, thou wealthy — his toil is 
nobler than thy luxury. Fret not at the rich, thou poor — his 
beneficence is comelier than thy murmuring. Join hands, both of 
you, rich and poor together, as ye toil in the brotherhood of God's 
great harvest -field — heirs of a double heritage — thou poor, of thy 
kingly labor — thou rich, of thy queenly charity — and let Heaven 
bear witness to the bridal. 



DOOM OF SALATHIEL. 

George Croly. 



" Tarry thou till I come." I heard through all the voices of 
Jerusalem, I should have heard through all the thunder of the 
heavens, that calm, still voice, "Tarry thou till I come." 



134 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

I, the son of misfortune, emblem of the nation that living shall 
die and dying shall hve, that trampled by all, shall trample upon 
all, that bleeding from a thousand wounds shall be unhurt, that 
beggared, shall wield the wealth of nations, that without a name 
shall sway the councils of kings, that without a city shall inhabit 
in all kingdoms, that scattered like the dust shall be bound 
together like the rock, that perishing by the sword, by the chain, 
by famine, by fire, shall be imperishable, unnumbered, glorious as 
the stars of heaven ; I, doomed to immortahty on earth, separation 
from all that cheers and ennobles life, I was to survive my coun- 
try ; to see the soil, dear to my heart, violated by the feet of 
barbarians yet unborn ; her sacred monuments, her tombs, a scoff 
and a spoiL Without a resting place for the sole of my feet, I 
was to witness the slave, the man of blood, the furious infidel, 
rioting in my inheritance, digging up the bones of my fathers, 
trampling on the holy ruins of Jerusalem. 

Of all the labors of human wealth and power, devoted to wor- 
ship, the temple in which I then stood was the most mighty. In 
my after years, the years of my unhappy wanderings far from the 
graves of my kindred, I have seen all the most famous shrines of 
the great kingdoms of idolatry. Constrained by cruel circumstance 
and the still sterner cruelty of man, I have stood before the altar 
of the Ephesian Diana, that masterpiece of Ionian splendor. I 
have strayed through the woods of Delphi, and been made a 
reluctant witness of the superb mysteries of that chief of the 
oracles of imposture. Dragged in chains, I have been forced to 
join the procession around the Minerva of the Acropolis, and 
almost forgot my chains in wonder at that monument of a genius 
which ought to have been consecrated only to the true God who 
gave it. The Temple of the Capitoline Jove, the Sancta Sophia 
of the Rome of Constantine, the stiU more stupendous and costly 
fabric in which the third Rome stiU bows before the fisherman of 
Galilee ; all these have been known to my st^ps ; yet all were 
dreams and shadows to the grandeur, the dazzling beauty, the 



10 viCTis, 135 

almost unearthly glory of that Temple which once covered the 
Mount of Vision of the Lord. 

This glory of my people Israel, I was now to see vanish forever. 
The Eoman legionaries had been once repulsed, and now success- 
ful, would yet have spared the temple ; but a new enemy was 
come — conqueror alike of the victor and the vanquished — fire. I 
heard its roar around the sanctuary. The Romans, appalled, fled 
to the portal ; but they were doomed ; a wall of fire stood before 
I them. It melted the golden roof ; calcined the marble floor ; it 
I dissipated in vapor the gems that studded the walls. All who 
entered lay turned to ashes. 

Still I lived ; and as my strength failed, and the fiery heat ex- 
tinguishing sight withered my sinews, and I rejoiced that death 
had come, inevitable death, yet again I heard those words of 

doom — 

"Tarry thou till I come." 



10 VICTIS. 

W. W. Story. 

I SING the Hymn of the Conquered, who fell in the battle of life — 
The hymn of the wounded, the beaten, who died overwhelmed in 

the strife ; 
Not the jubilant song of the victors, for whom the resounding 

acclaim 
Of nations was lifted in chorus, whose brows wore the chaplet of 

fame — 
I Bat the hymn of the low and the humble, the weary, the broken 
j in heart, 

I Who strove and who failed, acting bravely a silent and desperate 
i part ; 

I Whose youth bore no flower in its branches, whose hopes burned 
I in ashes away, 

iFrom whose hands slipped the prize they had grasped, who stood 
, at the dying of day. 



136 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

With the work of their life all around them, upKfted, unheeded, 

alone, 
With death swooping down o'er their failure, and all but their 

faith overthrown. 

While the voice of the world shouts its chorus, its paean for those 

who have won — 
While the trumpet is sounding triumphant, and high to the 

breeze and the sun 
Gay banners are waving, hands clapping, and hurrying feet 
Thronging after the laurel-crowned victors — I stand on the field of 

defeat 
In the shadow, 'mongst those who are fallen and wounded and 

dying — and there 
Chant a requiem low, place my hand on their pain-knotted brows, , 

breathe a prayer, , 

Hold the hand that is hapless, and whisper, " They only the vic- 
tory win 

Who have fought the good fight and have vanquished the demon 
that tempts us within ; 

Wlio have held to their faith unseduced by the prize that the 
world holds on high ; 

Who have dared for a high cause to suffer, resist, fight — if need 
be, to die." 



Speak, History ! AYho are Hfe's victors ? Unroll thy long annals 

and say — 
Are they those whom the world called the victors, who won the 

success of the day 1 
The martyrs or iJ^ero 1 The Spartans who fell at Thermopylae's 

tryst ? 
Or the Persians and Xerxes 1 His judges or Socrates ? Pilate or, 

Christ? 



APPEAL TO IRELAND. 137 



APPEAL TO IRELAND. 

Thos. F, Meagher. 

I A RIGHT noble philosophy has taught us that God has divided 
Ithe world into those beautiful systems called nations ; each of 
which, fulfilling its separate mission, becomes an essential benefit 
jto the rest. 

To this Divine arrangement wUl you alone refuse to conform 1 
Other nations with abilities far less eminent than those which you 
[possess, having greater difiiculties to encounter, have obeyed with 
fheroism the commandment from which you have swerved. Shame 
ppon you, Ireland ! ! Norway, with her scanty population, scarce 
a million strong, has kept her flag upon the Categat — has reared a 
race of gallant sailors to guard her frozen soil. Year after year 
has nursed upon that soil a harvest to which the Swede can lay 
no claim. 

i S\vitzerland — without a colony — without a gun upon the seas — 
Kvithout a helping hand from any court in Europe, has held for 
centuries her footing on the Alps. 

Greece — whom Goth nor Turk nor time hath spared — ^has flung 
the crescent from the Acropolis — has crowned a king in Athens 
whom she calls her own ! 

Holland, with the ocean as her foe, — from the swamp in which 
jrou would have sunk your graves, has bid the palace and the 
n^arehouse, costlier than the palace, rear their ponderous shapes 
ibove the waves that battle at their base, has outstripped the 
'iierchant of the Rialto, has threatened England in the Thames, 
las swept the channel with her broom ; and although, for a day, 
'she reeled before the bayonets of Dumouriez, she sprang to her 
feet again, and with the cry of " Up with the house of Orange !" 
''■ struck the tricolor from her dykes ! 

j And you — you who are eight millions strong — you who have no 
Ihreatening sea to stem, no avalanche to dread — you who say 
[that you can shield along your coast a thousand sail and be the 



138 FRANKLIN SPEAKMR. 

prince of a mighty commerce — you will mortgage the last acre of 
your estates — -you will be beggared by the million — you will 
perish by the thousand — and the finest island which the sim looks 
down upon, amid the jeers and hootings of the world, will blacken 
into a plague-spot, a wilderness, a sepulcher ! God of heaven ! ! ,. 
Shall such things come to pass 1 A^Tiat say you, yeomen of the 
Xorth? Has the red hand withered? Shall the question be 
always asked, — "Has the time come?" And shall no heroictr 
voice reply, " It has "? U 

Swear it, that the time has come ! Swear it, that the rule of ^ 
England is unjust ! Swear it, that the flag which floats next 
summer from the battlements of Derry shall bear the inscription 
of Dongannon ! Swear it, that you will have another anniver- 
sary to celebrate — that another obelisk shall cast its shadow on 
the Boyne, — that hereafter your children, descending to that 
river may say: "This is to the memory of our fathers; they were^ 
proud of the victory which their grandsires won upon these banks, 
but they yearned to achieve a victory of their own. — Their grand- 
sires fought and conquered for a king — our fathers fought and 
conquered for a nation ! " ^ 



FANATICISM. 

George W. Curtis. 

There are still some who insist that " Puritan " means all thai 
is sour, malignant, conceited, and meddlesome. They leave aU 
details and concentrate their Avratli in one word — fanatic. They 
certainly were fanatics, or we should not be here. The gay youth 
who tripped off to dance at Merry Mount, would hardly have 
waltzed the new world into the form we see. The work of the 
world is done I5y just this Puritan or fanatical spirit. 

It was the fanaticism of Columbus that discovered America 
So a few years ago, you might have seen a terrible fanatic riding 



i 
4> 



FANATICISM, 139 

at noonday, up the valley of tlie Shenandoah, far outstripping his 
companions, his whole soul intent upon one purpose, and that 
blazing from his eye. He will not see nor hear nor believe that 
it is his army he meets retreating. He reaches the front ; he leaps 
to the ground. The commanding officer whispers to him, " Oh ! 
sir, we are beaten." " Beaten ! You are not beaten ; this army 
is not beaten ; " and springing into his saddle, this arch-fanatic, 
Phil. Sheridan, seizes that army, as Jupiter seizes a thunder-bolt, 
hurls it against the enemy, and sends him whirling up the valley. 
So through the black smoke-rifts of the fight in Mobile Bay, our 
history will see forever one figure lashed to the maintop and 
directing the storm of war, — the sturdy fanatic, Farragut. 

But peace hath her fanaticism. It was a very Yankee of the 
Yankees who, undaunted by defeat, undismayed by delay, at last 
tied Europe and America together by a thread, like a film of sea- 
weed, which the wildest ocean fury cannot snap. If we get mes- 
; sages from London in twenty minutes, it is due to that restless 
I and resistless fanatic, Cyrus W. Field. 

But the triumphs of Puritanism do not stop at our shores. 
The most powerful man in England to-day, is politically the child 
of the Puritans. America is the lever with which he heaves the 
imperial public opinion of Britain. Some day may he come among 
us ; and this country will rise from the sea-coast to the prairies, 
to welcome the British Yankee, John Bright. 

We leave to Greece her glory, to Kome her grandeur, to every 
land its choicest and peculiar claim. But to»day our hearts behold 
New England, clad in her sparkling snow, crowned with her ever- 
green pine ; and the glory of her brow is justice ; the splendor of 
her eye is liberty ; and her abounding bosom shall nourish endless 
generations, 

I 



140 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 



GOD IN HISTORY. 

JOHK LaKAHAU. 

The hand of God never tires, nor are its movements aimless. 
It makes all things subservient to its designs, and at every turn 
disappoints the calculations of man, causing the most insignificant 
events to expand to the mightiest consequences, while those which 
have the appearance of mountains vanish into nothing. In the 
study of such events we do well to remember that the hand once 
nailed to the tree holds the chain that binds the past, the present, 
and the future. His way is in the sea, His path is in the 
great waters, and His footsteps are not knowTi. But wisdom 
marks His plans ; truth and justice attend their development, and 
out of seeming evil He brings triumphant good. 

Says Oliver Cromwell : " What are all histories but God mani- 
festing Himself, that He hath shaken down and trampled under 
foot whatsoever He hath not planted?" History is not a series of 
jumbled happenings. God is in the facts of history as truly as 
He is in the march of the seasons, the revolution of the planets, 
or the arcliitecture of worlds. 

The triumph of truth has always been in the keeping of God. 
The eye that slumbers not nor sleeps, the hand that fainteth not 
nor is wearfed, have made empires its highway and prepared the 
world for its reception. Read the history of nations from Egypt 
to Rome. They rise as pictures, flame as meteors, and vanish like 
snow-wreaths in the stm-flash for the one purpose of preparing the 
way for the advent of Him who said, " I am the truth." 

" The law which pervades the kingdom of nature is discerned in 
the history of mankind. Truth makes silent progress, like the 
waters that trickle behind the rocks, and loosen them from the 
mountains on which they rest. Suddenly the hidden operation is 
revealed, and a single day suffices to lay bare the work of years, if 
not of ages." Thus, everywhere and always, God's agents — small 
and great — are at work, unsettling the wrong, establishing the 



AWAIT THE ISSUE. 141 

right, and carrying the links of Truth's golden chain round the 
world. In due time the links shall be joined — link to its appro- 
priate link — and the chain be completed. 

" Thus the gazers of the nations, 

And the watchers of the skies, 
Looking through the coming ages 

Shall behold with joyful eyes, 
On the fiery track of freedom 

Fall the mild baptismal rain. 
And the ashes of old evil 

Feed the future's golden grain. " 



AWAIT THE ISSUE. 

Thomas Carlyle. 

In this world, with its wild whirling eddies and mad foam 
oceans, where men and nations perish as without law, and judg- 
ment for an unjust thing is sternly delayed, dost thou think that 
there is therefore no justice ? It is what the fool hath said in his 
heart. It is what the wise, in all times, were wise because they 
denied, and knew forever not to be. I tell thee again, there is 
nothing else but justice. One strong thing I find here below : the 
just thing, the true thing. 

My friend, if thou hast all the artillery of Woolwich trundling 
at thy back in support of an unjust thing, and infinite bonfires 
visibly waiting ahead of thee, to blaze forth centuries long for thy 
victory on behalf of it, I would advise thee to cry halt, to fling 
down thy baton, and say, " In Heaven's name, No !" 

Thy " success "? Poor fellow, what will thy success amount to ? 

If the thing is unjust, thou hast not succeeded ; no, not though 

bonfires blazed from north to south, and bells rang, and editors 

j wrote leading articles, and the just thing lay trampled out of sight, 

I to all mortal eyes an abolished and annihilated thing. 

It is the right and noble alone that wiU have victory in this 



143 FRANKLIN SPEAKER, 

struggle ; the rest is wholly an obstruction, a postponement, and 
fearful imperilment of the victory. Towards an eternal center of 
right and nobleness, and of that only, is all confusion tending. 

Await the issue. In all battles, if you aAvait the issue, each 
fighter has prospered according to his right. His right and his 
might at the close of the account, were one and the same. He 
has fought with all his might, and in exact proportion to all his 
right he has prevailed. His very death is no victory over him. 
He dies indeed ; but his work lives — very truly hves. 

A heroic Wallace, quartered on the scafi'old, cannot hinder that 
his work become one day a part of England ; but he does hinder 
that it become, on tyrannical and unfair terms, a part of it ; com- 
mands still, from his old Valhalla and Temple of the Brave, that 
there be a just, real union, as of brother and brother, not a false 
and merely semblant one, as of slave and master. If the union 
with England be in fact one of Scotland's chief blessings, we 
thank Wallace withal that it was not the chief curse. Scotland is 
not Ireland ; no, because brave men rose there and said, " Behold, 
ye must not tread us down like slaves; and ye shall not and 
cannot ! " 

Fight on, thou brave, true heart, and falter not, through dark 
fortune and through bright. The cause thou fightest for, so far as 
it is true, no further, yet precisely so far, is very sure of victory. 
The falsehood alone of it wiU be conquered, will be abolished, as 
it ought to be ; but the truth of it is part of Nature's own laws ; 
co-operates with the world's eternal tendencies, and cannot be 
conquered. 



THE SPIRIT OF INaiTIKY. 

F. E. Beltzhoo\ter. 

On the roof of Agamemnon's palace, in Argos, a watchman sat 
from year to year, waiting and watching the north for the great 
signal of fire which should bring the glad tidings of the faU of 



THE SPIRIT OF INQUIRY. 143 

Troy. Long years had elapsed, and lo ! as it drew near morning 
there was a light in the sky, and the watchman cried aloud, and 
messengers ran abroad throughout Argos, bidding men to burn 
thank-offerings and incense on the altars. 

More than three thousand years have rolled away since this 
I grand and rugged and stalwart telegraphic line of light lit up the 
mountain tops of the world over lands and seas, to carry the 
tidmgs of great national victory and joy. What a sublime and 
prophetic picture of the future did that old majestic king of men 
paint on the sky on that eventful night, as he sent the war news 
flashing on gold pinions of fire from Mount Ida to the Saronic 
Sea. Those great signal fires have long ago gone out on Ida and 
Athos, and the cliffs of Cithaeron are silent and dark, but the 
immortal spirit of inquiry which kindled the light that gilded all 
their glorious summits cannot die. In all ages it has dared the 
terrors of unknown and savage seas, and invaded the wilds of un- 
I trodden lands, and filled the world with the imperishable monu- 
! ments of its increasing search for knowledge. It has seized the 
speed and power of steam, and bridled the lightning to bear its 
winged words from land to land. Its conquests achieved under 
the genius of liberty have girdled the earth with fires of intelli- 
gence which burn not for an hour or a day or a year, but perennial 
in their brightness. 

It chained Prometheus to the rock. It burned the martyrs of 
the press at Tyburn and Smithfield. It was the silent pillar of 
cloud by day and of fire by night which lead the heroes of 
humanity through the long, dark, despotic years of the past up to 
freedom. There are no more flaming swords to bar the way of 
man to knowledge. There is no tyrannical Jupiter to impale the 
impious mortal who dares to seize the bolts of thought. There 
are no stakes and racks and tortures for the followers of heroic 
John TwjTi. 

It is now the greatest glory of life to think, and the grandest 
liberty to utter ; and he who highest dares to scale the mountainous, 



144 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

craggy steeps of thought, or dives the deepest into the eternal •■ 
abyss of unsolved doubt, stands as the world's real hero. 



MACDONALD'S CHARGE AT WAGRAM. 

J. T. Headley. 

All the lion in Macdonald's nature was roused, and he had 
fully resolved to execute the dread commission given biTii or fall 
on the field. Still he towered unhurt amid his falling guard, and, 
with his eye steadily on the enemy's center, moved sternly on. 

At the close and fierce discharges of those cross-batteries on its 
mangled head, that column woid.d sometimes stop and stagger 
back like a strong ship when smitten by a wave. The next 
moment the drums would beat their hurried charge ; and the 
calm, steady voice of Macdonald ring back through his exhausted 
ranks, nerving them to the desperate valor that filled his oavti 
spirit. Never before was such a charge made ; and it seemed at 
every moment that the torn and mangled mass must break and 

fly- 

The Austrian cannon are gradually wheeled around till they 
stretch away in parallel lines,^ like two walls of fire, on each side 
of this band of heroes, and hurl an incessant tempest of lead 
against their bosoms. But the stern warriors close in and fill up 
the frightful gaps made at every discharge and still press forward. 

Macdonald has communicated his o^^ti settled purpose to con- 
quer or die to his devoted followers. There is no excitement, no 
enthusiasm such as Murat was wont to infuse into his men, Avlien 
pouring on the foe his terrible cavalry; no cries of "Vive I'Em- 
pereur " are heard along the lines ; but in their place is an unalter- 
able resolution that nothing but annihilation can shake. The eyes 
of the army and of the world are on them ; and they carry 
Napoleon's fate as they go. 

Human strength has its limits ; and human effort the spot where 



macdonald's charge. 145 

it ceases forever. Xo living man could have carried that column 
to where it stands but the iron-hearted leader at its head. But 
now he halts and casts his eye over his little surviving band that 
stands all alone in the midst of the enemy. He looks back on 
his path ; and as far as the eye can reach he sees the course of his 
heroes by the black swath of dead men that stretches like a huge 
serpent over the plain. 

Out of sixteen thousand men with which he started, but fifteen 
hundred are left beside him. Ten out of every eleven have 
fallen ; and here at length the tired hero pauses for a moment and 
surveys with a stern and anxious eye his few remaining followers. 
The heart of Napoleon stops beating at the sight ; and well it 
may, for his throne is where Macdonald stands. He bears the 
empire on his brave heart : he is the empire. Shall he turn at 
last and sound retreat ? The fate of nations wavers to and fro, 
for, like a speck in the distance, while Macdonald pauses, the can- 
non are piling the dead in heaps around him. " Will he turn and 
fly" is the secret and agonizing question Xapoleon puts to himself? 
No ! he is worthy of the mighty trust committed to him. The em- 
pire stands or falls with him ; but shall stand while he stands. 

Looking away to where his emperor sits, he sees the dark 
masses of the " Old Guard " in motion and the shining helmets of 
the brave cuirassiers sweeping to his relief. " Forward ! " breaks 
from his iron lips. 

The roll of drums and the pealing of trumpets answer the 
volley which smites that exhausted column ; and the next moment 
it is seen piercing the Austrian center. The day is won — the 
empire saved. 

7 



146 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 



THE BABIES. 

1^0. 1. 

Mark Twain. 

" The babies. — As they comfoH us in our sorrows^ let us not for- 
get them in our festivities." 

I LIKE that. We haven't all had the good fortune to be ladies, 
we haven't all been generals or poets or statesmen ; but when the 
toast works down to the babies, we stand on common ground, for 
we have all been babies. It is a shame that for a thousand years 
the world's banquets have utterly ignored the baby — as if hs 
didn't amount to any thing ! K you gentlemen will stop and 
think a minute, — if you Avill go back fifty or a hundred years, to 
your early married life, and contemplate your first baby, you will 
remember that he amoimted to a good deal, and even something 
over. 

You soldiers all know that when that little fellow arrived at 
family headquarters you had to hand in your resignation. He 
took entire command. You became his lackey, his mere body- 
servant, and you had to stand around, too. He was not a com- 
mander who made allowances for time, distance, weather, or any 
thing else. You had to execute his order whether it was possible 
or not. And there was only one form of marching in his manual 
of tactics, and that was the double-quick. He treated you with 
every sort of insolence and disrespect, and the bravest of you 
didn't dare to say a word. You could face the death-storm of 
Donelson and Yicksburg, and give back blow for blow ; but when 
he clawed your whiskers, and pulled your hair, and twisted your 
nose, you had to take it. 

When the thunders of war were sounding in your ears, you set 
your faces toward the batteries and advanced with steady tread ; 
but when he turned on the terrors of his war-whoop, you advanced 
in the other direction — and mighty glad of the chance, too. When 



THE BABIES, 147 

lie called for soothing-syrup, did you venture to throw out any 
side remarks about certain services unbecoming an officer and a 
gentleman? No, — you got up and got it. If he ordered his 
bottle, and it wasn't warm, did you talk back % Not you, — you 
went to work and warmed it. You even descended so far in 
your menial office as to take a suck at that warm, insipid stuff 
yourself, to see if it was right, — three parts water to one of milk, 
a touch of sugar to modify the colic, and a drop of peppermint to 
cure those immortal hiccups. I can taste that stuff yet ! 

And how many things you learned as you went along ; senti- 
mental young folks still took stock in that beautiful old saying 
that when the baby smiles in his sleep, it is because the angels 
are whispering to him. Very pretty, but " too thin," — simply 
wind on the stomach, my friends ! 

The idea that a baby doesn't amount to anything ! ^\Tiy, one 
baby is just a house and a front yard full by itself. He is enter- 
prising, irrepressible, brimful of lawless activities. Do what you 
please, you can't make him stay on the reservation. Sufficient 
unto the day is one baby ; — as long as you are in your right mind 
don't you ever pray for twins. 



THE BABIES. 

No. 2. ■ 

Mark Twain. 

You have toasted the babies, and it was high time for a 
toast-master to recognize their importance. Fifty years hence 
we shall all be dead ; and then this flag, if it still survives — and 
let us hope it may — will be floating over a republic numbering 
two hundred million souls, according to the settled laws of our 
increase ; our present schooner of state will have grown into a 
political leviathan — a Great Eastern — and the cradled babies of 
to-day will be on deck. Let them be well trained, for we are 
going to leave a big contract on their hands. 



148 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

Among the three or four millioii cradles now rocking in the 
land are some which this nation would preserve for ages as sacred 
things, if we could know which ones they are. In one of these 
cradles the unconscious Farragut of the future is at this moment 
teething — think of it ! in another the future great historian is 
lying — and doubtless he will continue to lie until his earthly 
mission is ended ; in another the future President is busying 
himself with no profounder problem of state than what the mis- 
chief has become of his hair so early ; and in a mighty array of 
other cradles there are now some sixty thousand future office- 
seekers getting ready to furnish him occasion to grapple with that 
same old problem a second time ; and in still one more cradle, 
somewhere under the flag, the future illustrious commander-in-chief 
of the American armies is so little burdened with liis approaching 
grandeurs and responsibilities as to be giving his whole strategic 
mind, at tliis moment, to trying to find out some way to get his 
own big toe into his mouth, — an achievement which (meaning no 
disrespect) the illustrious guest of tliis evening — General Grant — 
turned his whole attention to some fifty-six years ago. And if the 
child is but the prophecy of the man, there are mighty few will 
doubt that he succeeded. 



OLIVER CROMWELL. 

GoLDwnr Smith. 

Cromwell was a fanatic ; and all fanatics are morally the worse 
for their fanaticism : they set dogma above virtue, they take 
their own ends for God's ends, and their own enemies for His. 
But that this man's religion was sincere, who can doubt ? 

It not only fills his most private letters, as well as his speeches 
and despatches, but it is the only clew to liis life. For it, when ' 
past forty, happy in his family, weU to do in the world, he turned ' 



OLIVER CROMWELL. 149 

out with his children and exposed his life to sword and bullet in 
j obscure skirmishes as Avell as in glorious fields. 
I On his death-bed his thoughts wandered, not — like those of 
I Napoleon — among the eddies of battle, or in the mazes of ^state- 
; craft, but among the religious questions of his youth. Constant 
hypocrisy would have been fatal to his decision. The double- 
minded man is unstable in all his ways ; Ms course is as straight 
as that of a great force of nature. There is something not only 
more than animal, but more than natural in his courage. If 
fanatics so often beat men of the world in council, it is partly 
because they throw the die of earthly destiny with a steady hand, 
as those whose great treasure is not here. 

Walking amid such perils, not of sword and bullet only, but of 
envious factions and intriguing enemies on every side, it was im- 
possible that Cromwell should not contract a wariness, and perhaps 
more than a wariness, of step. It was impossible that his character 
should not in some measure reflect the darkness of his time. 

In establishing his government, he had to feel his way, to 
sound men's dispositions, to conciliate different interests; and 
these are processes not favorable to simplicity of mind, still less 
favorable to the appearance of it, yet compatible with general 
honesty of purpose. As to what is called his hypocritical use of 
Scriptural language. Scriptural language was his native tongue. 
In it he spoke to his wife and children, as well as to his armies 
and his parliaments ; it burst from his lips when he saw victory 
at Dunbar ; it hovered on them in death, when policy, and almost 
consciousness, was gone. 

He said that he would gladly have gone back to private life. Is 
it incredible that he should have felt the desire ? Nature, no doubt, 
with high powers gives the wish to use them ; and it must be 
liitter for one who knows that he can do great things to pass away 
before great things have been done. But when great things have 
been done for a great cause on an illustrious scene, the victor of 
Naseby, Dunbar, and Worcester, the savior of a nation's cause, may 



150 EANKLIN SPEAKER. 

be ready to welcome the evening hour of memory and repose, espe- 
cially if, like CromweU, he has a heart fuU of affection, and a 
happy home. 



CONSERVATISM. 

Geoege W. Curtis. 

The early abolitionists asserted that the Declaration of Inde- 1 
pendence was not a lie but a truth ; and that to deny it was to 
imperil national peace. Conservatism with a shudder retorted : 
"It is sheer insanity and revolution." 

Political radicalism nailed its truths to the wall, and gradually j 
and steadily increased. States began to defy and secede. Con- 
servatism, crusted with capital, shouted " Well ! let them go. 
You've driven them. We've no right to coerce." It chuckled 
and winked and sneered over Bull Eun. Was that conservatism ? 
It tried to harass, to hamper, to hamstring the Government. Was 
that conservative ? When Lincoln emancipated the slaves, it 

declared he had divided the ISTorth and united the South. Was 

i! 
that conservative ? j| 

And finally, when Grant, opening his whole hand and grasping [ 
what he called the shell of the Confederacy, closed it again and |': 
crushed rebellion utterly, conservatism shouted, " Now let the |; 
enemies of human rights drop their arms, seize their votes, send ;; 
their soldiers as representatives to Washington, and obtain con- ji 
trol of Congress." Was that conservative 1 

A friend of mine was a student of Couture the painter in Paris. 
One day the master came and looked over the pupil's drawing 
and said to him, "My friend, that line should go so"; and indi- 
cated it lightly on the paper with his pencil. To prove the 
accuracy of the master's eye, the pupil rubbed out the correction 
and left the line. The next day Couture came, and looking over 
the drawing, stopped in surprise. " That's curious," said lae, " 1 
thought I altered that." " This line goes so," he added ; and drew 



THE EMPIRE OF THE WEST. 151 

it firmly with iDlack upon tlie paper. The next day the master 
came again ; stopped short when he saw the drawing ; looked at 
it a moment without speaking ; then, with his thumb nail, he cut 
quite through the paper. " That's the way this line ought to go," 
he said, and passed on. 

So the hearts and minds of our fathers marked the line of our 
true development. Conservatism rubbed it out. The Missouri 
struggle emphasized the line again. Conservatism' rubbed it out. 
The tragedy of Kansas drew the line more sternly. Conservatism 
rubbed it oiit. 

Then, at last, the Divine finger drew in fire and blood, sliavigly, 
SHARPLY, through our wailing homes, through our torn and bleed- 
ing country, through our very quivering hearts, the line of liberty 
and justice and equal rights ; and conservatism might as well try 
to rub out the rainbow from the heavens as to erase tliis the 
decision of the atre. 



THE EMPIRE OF THE WEST. 

A. BUELISGAME. 

Upon the broad foundations laid by the hardy woodsmen in 
the midst of privations and sorrows, and along the huge paths 
beaten by buffaloes' hoofs before the courage of man struggled 
with the wilderness, there has sprung up a civilization, which, for 
energy and magnificence, is without a parallel in the world's 
history. It outruns the imagination of the poet, who tells us — 

' ' A thousand years scarce serve to form a state. " 

In our time states are born of the wildAvood in a day, with rights 
the Eomans never knew, and clothed with more than the thun- 
ders of Olympian Jove. 

Little thought Boone and a few struggling hunters, as they 
passed through the gap of the Alleghanies long ago, and hid 
themselves in the reeds fringing the great rivers of the "West, that 



152 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

they were the van of a mighty empire. Little thought Dr. Cutter, 
when he went forth from Beverly, in Massachusetts, and settled 
in Ohio, that the first spot where his feet should find rest would 
become the home of commerce, and the birthplace of ships swifter 
and grander than those which went forth annually from his early 
home to the land of the orient. 

Little thought the brave men who filled the valleys of the 
Muskingum, the Maumee, the Wabash, and the Kaskaskia, that 
ere the grass shoidd grow green upon their graves, mighty cities 
would spring up where the wolf howled; that the Christian's 
shining cross would stand where the Lidian told his love, and 
breathed his prayer to the offended Manitou ; that the lakes would 
whiten with sails, and murmur with the rush of keels ; that the, 
rivers upon which they gazed in silent wonder, would bear on 
their bosoms the rich argosies of ten millions of people ; and thai 
steamboats, not then born in the brain of the inventor, would gc 
roaring down the waters with a thousand men on their decks. 
These things they have seen, — we haA^e seen. They are more like 
magic, or the dream of some fairy tale, than like reality. 

Yet still the mighty stream of emigration pours westward 
" At first a little rividet winding its way through some beautif a 
valley, now fed by a thousand springs welling up by the wayside 
anon increased by other rills mingling with its smiling waters, \i 
has flowed on, and roUed onward, widening and deepening its 
channel, until now it laves with its rising flood the base of th( 
stony mountains." Ay, it has overleaped them, and this daj 
pours its wild torrent of living, breathing humanity upon the far 
off shores of the peacefid Pacific. 

The star of empire has passed the Atlantic slope, and nov 
stands glittering above the summit of the Alleghanies. In a fev 
more years it will have sped its way to the regions of the settim 
sun ; for true is it now, as in the days of Bishop Berkeley, that 

" "Westward the course of empire takes its way." 



I THE ATTACK ON VERSAILLES, 153 



THE ATTACK ON VERSAILLES. 

Thomas Caklyle. 

The dull dawn of a new morning, drizzly and chill, has broken 
over Versailles. A body-guard looked, from a window of the 
chateau, to see what prospect there was in heaven and in earth. 
Eascality, male and female, is prowling in view of him. He can- 
not forbear a passing curse on them. Ill words breed worse ; till 
the worst word came ; and then the ill deed. 

I The maledicent body-guard — nay, more guards than he, fire ; a 
ttnan's arm is shattered. One will say that a national guard witli- 
but arms was "stabbed." But see! sure enough! poor Jerome, 
!an unarmed national, a youth, reels death-stricken ; rushes to the 
pavement, scattering it with his blood and brains. 

Wild rises the howl of pity, of infinite revenge. In a few 
moments the gate of the inmost court, the court of marble, is 
forced and burst open ; the court of marble is overflowed ; up the 
grand staircase, up all stairs and entrances, rushes the living 
deluge. The two sentry body-guards are trodden down ; are mas- 
sacred with a hundred pikes. Women snatch their cutlasses or 
my weapon and storm in ; other women lift the corpse of slain 
Jerome ; lay it on the marble steps ; there shall the bruised 
[ace and head — dumb forever — speak. 

Woe, now, to all body-guards ! mercy is none for them. Literally 
" from the jaws of destruction fly fast, ye body-guards ! rabid insur- 
rection, like a hell-hound, is at your heels. The terror-stricken 
Guards fly, bolting and barricading ; the mob follows ; through hall 
Dn hall, toward the royal room, farthest of the apartments ! Five 
sentinels rush through that long suite ; they are in the anteroom 
knocking loud: "Save the queen!" Trembling women fall at 
'their feet with tears ; are answered : " Yes ! we will die ; save ye 
the queen." 

j The queen flies for life across the (Eil de Boeuf, against the 
|main door of which insurrection batters. She is in the king's 

I 



154 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

apartments ; in the king's arms ; she clasps her children amid a 
faithful few. The battery of insurrectionary axes clangs audible . 
across the QEil de Boeuf. What an hour ! 

Rage, which had brewed itself in twenty thousand hearts for 
the last four-and-twenty hours, has taken fire ; Jerome's brained 
corpse lies there as a Hve coal. L 

They are heaping stools, benches, all movables against the door 
at which the axe of insurrection thunders. The door shakes and 
crackles. Must they all perish miserably and royalty with them ? 
Louder and louder rages the mob ; louder and louder it thunders 
at the (Eil de Boeuf. 

On a sudden it ceases. Wild rushing ; — the cries grow fainter. 
Then comes the tramp of regular steps ; then a friendly knocking. , 

"We are the Center Grenadiers; open to us; we have not for- 
gotten how you saved us at Fontenoy." The door is opened. 
The queen is safe ! 



THE REVOLTJTION OP 1688. 

T. B. Macattlay, 

The revolution of 1688, of all revolutions the least violent,! 
was of all the most beneficent. It finally decided the great ques- 
tion whether the popular element which had ever since the day 
of Fitzwalter and De Moutfort been found in English polity, 
should be destroyed by the monarchical, or should be suffered tc 
develop freely and become predominant. 

The strife between the two principles had been long, fierce, anc 
doubtful. It had produced seditions, impeachments, rebellions 
battles, sieges, and proscriptions. Sometimes liberty and some 
times royalty had seemed on the point of perishing. But the king 
at-arms, who proclaimed William and Mary before Whitehal 
gate, did in truth announce that this great struggle was over : tha 
there was eternal union between the Throne and Parliament; tha 



I THE REVOLUTION OF 1688. 155 

I 

the ancient laws by which the prerogative was bounded would 
'henceforth be held as sacred as the prerogative itself. 
I The highest eulogy which can be pronounced on the revolution 
I of 1688 is this : that it was our last revolution. Now, if ever, the 
I English people ought to appreciate the whole importance of the 
I stand made by their forefathers against the house of Stuart. All 
i around us the world is convulsed by the agonies of great nations. 
Governments which seemed likely to stand for ages, have been, of 
a sudden, shaken and overthrown. The proudest capitals of west- 
ern Europe have streamed with civil blood. 

All evil passions, the thirst for gain and the thirst for vengeance, 
the antipathy of class to class and of race to race, have broken 
loose from the control of Divine and human laws. Eear and 
anxiety have clouded the faces and oppressed the hearts of millions; 
trade has been suspended, and industry paralyzed. 

Doctrines hostile to all arts, to all sciences, to all industry, to 
all domestic charity — doctrines which, if carried into effect, woidd 
end in thirty years all that thirty centuries have done, and would 
make the fairest provinces of France and Germany as savage as 
Congo or Patagonia, — have been avowed from the Tribune, and 
defended by the sword. Meanwhile, in our island the regular 
course of government has been uninterrupted. The few bad men 
who longed for license and plunder have not had the courage to 
confront for one moment the strength of a loyal nation, rallied in 
firm array round a parental throne. 

And if it be asked : what has made us to differ from others ? 
the answer is : we have never lost what they so wildly seek. It 
is because we had freedom in the midst of servitude ; that we 
have order in the midst of anarchy. 

Eor the authority of law, for the security of property, for the 
happiness of our homes, our gratitude is due — under Him who 
raises and rules the nations as He wills — to the Long Parliament, 
to the Convention, and to William of Orange. 



156 FRANKLIX SPEAKER. 



UNCONSCIOUS INFLUENCE. 

Horace Bushnell. 

Histories and biograpliies make little account of the power 
men exert insensibly over each other. They tell how men havei 
led armies, established empires, enacted laws, gained causes, sung, 
reasoned, and taught, always occupied with setting forth what 
they do with a purpose. But what they do without a purpose, 
the streams of influence that flow out from their persons unbidden 
on the world, they cannot trace or compute, and seldom ever 
mention. 

We must not conclude that influences of this kind are insig- 
nificant because they are unnoticed and noiseless. How 'is it in 
the natural world? Behind the mere show, the outward noise j 
and stir of the world, nature always conceals the hand of control 
and the laws by which she rules. Who ever saw with the eye or 
heard with the ear the exertions of that tremendous astronomic 
force, which every moment holds the compact of the physical 
universe together ? 

The Bible calls the good man's life a light ; and it is the nature 
of light to flow out spontaneously in all directions, and uncon- 
sciously fill the world with its beams. So the Christian shines, 
not so much because he will, as because he is a luminous object. 
This symbol of light has its propriety in the fact that the uncon- 
scious influence is the cliief influence and has the precedence in 
its power over the world. Yet there are many who will be ready 
to think that light is a very tame and feeble instrument because 
it is noiseless. 

An earthquake is a much more vigorous and effective agency. 
Hear how it comes, thundering through the solid foundations of 
nature. It rocks a whole continent. The noblest works of men, 
cities, monuments, and temples, are in a moment leveled to the 
ground or swallowed down the opening gulfs of fire. Little do 
they think that the light of every morning, the soft and genial 



BUDDHA'S VICTORY. • 157 

j and silent light, is an agent many times more powerful. But let 
i the light of morning cease and return no more ; let the hour of 
1 morning come and bring with it no dawn ; the outcries of a horror- 
! stricken world would fill the air ; and make, as it were, darkness 
' audible. The beasts would go wild and frantic at the loss of the 
I sun ; the plants turn pale and die. 

A chill creeps on ; and frosty winds begin to howl across the 
freezing earth. Cold and yet colder is the night. At length the 
vital blood of all creatures stops, congealed. Down goes the frost 
to the center of the earth ; the heart of the sea is frozen ; nay, 
the earthquakes themselves are frozen in under their fiery caverns. 
The very globe itself and all the fellow-planets which have lost 
their sun are become mere balls of ice, swinging silent in the 
darkness. 

Such is the light which revisits us in the silence of morning. 
Has it no power ? It makes no shock or scar ; it would not wake 
an infant in its cradle ; and yet it perpetually recreates the world, 
rescuing it each morning as a prey from night and chaos. 



BUDDHA'S VICTORY. 

Edwin Arnou>. 

Lo ! the dawn 
Sprang with Buddha's victory ! lo ! in the East 
Flamed the first fires of beauteous day, poured forth 
Through fleeting folds of Night's black drapery. 
High in the widening blue, the herald-star 
Faded to paler silver, as there shot 
Brighter and brightest bars of rosy gleam 
Across the gray. Far off, the shadowy hills 
Saw the great Sun before the world was 'ware. 
And donned their crowns of crimson ; flower by flower 
Felt the warm breath of Morn and 'gan unfold 



158 . FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

Their tender lids. Over the spangled grass 

Swept the swift footsteps of the lovely Light, 

Turning the tears of 2yight to joyous gems ; 

Gilding the feathers of palms which waved 

Glad salutation ; darting beams of gold 

Into the glades ; touching with magic wand 

The stream to rippled ruby ; in the brake 

Fmdmg the mild eyes of the antelopes 

And saying, "It is day;" in nestled sleep 

Touching the small heads under many a wing 

And whispering, " Children, praise the light of day !", 

AMiereat there piped anthems of all the birds ; 

The kbil's fluted song, the bulbul's hymn, 

The " morning, morning," of the painted thrush. 

The grey crow's caw, the parrot's scream, the strokes 

Of the green hammersmith, the myna's chii-p, 

The never-finished love-talk of the doves, 

Yea ! and so holy Avas the influence 

Of that liigh da\\Ti which came A\-itli victory 

That, far and near, in homes of men there spread 

An unknown peace. The slayer hid his knife ; 

The robber laid his plunder back ; the shroff 

Counted full tale of coins ; all evil hearts 

Grew gentle, kind hearts gentler, as the balm 

Of that divinest Daybreak lightened earth 

Kings at fierce war called truce ; the sick men leaped 

Laughing from beds of pain ; the d^^ng smiled 

As though they knew that happy morn was sprung 

From fountains farther than the utmost East. 

Also in Ean and Jungle grew that day 

Friendship amongst the creatures ; spotted deer 

Browsed fearless where the tigress fed her cubs 

And chetahs lapped the pool beside the bucks ; 

Under the eagle's rock the brown hares scoured 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 159 

Wliile his fierce beak but preened an idle wing ; 
The snake sunned all his jewels in the beam 
AYith deadly fangs in sheath ; the shrike let pass 
The nestling finch ; the emerald halcyons 
Sate dreaming while the fishes played beneath ; 
Xor hawked the merops, though the butterflies — - 
Crimson and blue and amber — flitted thick 
Around his perch. The Spirit of our Lord 
Lay potent upon man and bird and beast, 
Even while he mused under that bodhi-tree 
Glorified with the conquest gained for all 
And lightened by a light greater than day's. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

No. L 

Charles H. Fowler. 

Abraham Lincoln was the representative character of his age. 
He incarnated the ideal Eepublic. No man ever so fully em- 
bodied the purposes, the affections, and the power of the people. 
He came up among us. He was one of us. His birth, his educa- 
tion, his habits, his motives, his feelings, and his ambitions, were 
all our own. Had he been born among hereditary aristocrats, he 
would not have been our President. But born in the cabin, and 
reared in the field and in the forest, he became the Great Com- 
moner. The classics of the schools might have polished him, 
but they would have separated him from us. But trained in the 
common-school of adversity, his calloused palms never slipped 
from the poor man's hand. A child of the people, he was acces- 
sible in the White House as he had been in the cabin. 

His practical wisdom made him the wonder of all lands. "With 
such certainty did Mr. Lincoln follow causes to their ultimate 
effects, that his foresight of contingencies seemed almost prophetic. 



160 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

WMle we in tiirn were calling him weak and stubborn and blind, 
Europe was amazed at his statesmanship, and awed into silence 
by the grandeur of his plans. 

Measured by what he did, Mr. Lincoln is a statesman without 
a peer. He stands alone in the world. He came to the govern- 
ment by a minority vote. Without an army, without a navy, 
without money, without munitions, he stepped into the midst of 
the most stupendous, most wide-spread, most thoroughly equipped 
and appointed, most deeply planned and infamous rebellion of all 
history. He stamped upon the earth, and two millions of armed 
men leaped foFw^ard. He spoke to the sea, and the mightiest 
navy the world ever saw crowned every wave. He breathed into 
the air, and money and munitions rained upon the people. 

He is radiant with all the great virtues, and his memory shall 
shed a glory upon this age that shall fill the eyes of men as they 
look into history. An administrator, he saved the nation in the 
perils of unparalleled civil war. A statesman, he justified his 
measures by their success. A philanthropist, he gave liberty to 
one race and salvation to another. A moralist, he bowed from 
the summit of human power to the foot of the cross, and became 
a Christian. A mediator, he exercised mercy under the most 
absolute abeyance to law. A leader, he was no partisan. A com- 
mander, he was untainted with blood. A ruler in desperate 
times, he was unsullied with crime. A man, he has left no word 
of passion, no thought of malice, no trick of craft, no act of 
jealousy, no purpose of selfish ambition. 

Thus perfected, without a model and without a peer, he was 
dropped into these troubled years to adorn and embellish all that 
is good and all that is great in our humanity, and to present to 
all coming time the representative of the divine idea of Free 
Government. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 161 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

No. 2. 

H. C. Deming. 

Abraham Lincoln's work was finished when, unheralded and 
almost unattended, leading his little son hy the hand, he walked 
into the streets of humiliated Richmond. 

If upon that auspicious morn, the crowning benediction had 
descended upon him, he might well have wished to die. What 
more could he ask for on earth % Assailed by the strongest con- 
spiracy that ever threatened a nation's life, his triumph over it 
was complete and overwhelming, conquering liberty for a class 
and national existence for a people. Was not this honor enough 
for one man ? 

He had survived ridicule ; he had outlived detraction and abuse ; 
he had secured the commendation of the world for purity of pur- 
pose, constancy in disaster, clemency in triumph, and the praise 
even of his armed foes for gentleness and mercy. In times more 
troubled he had administered government with more ability than 
Carnot, and war with more success than Napoleon the third. He 
had paled the glory of Hastings in preserving an empire, and had 
earned comparison with Hampden for self-command and rectitude 
of intention, while as emancipator of a race he stood alone in 
solitary glory without a rival and without a parallel. 

If fame had approached him Avith the laurels of a conqueror, if 
power had offered him a scepter, and ambition a crown, he would 
have scorned them all. He asked from men, he asked from God, 
but one culminating boon — peace, peace on the bloody waters and 
the blighted shore. 

Alas ! Such a consummation was denied. There are myste- 
rious conferences of guilt-laden men ; a conspiracy is formed, and 
on the night of the fourteenth of April, 1865, its purpose is 
accomplished. The nation stands aghast ; the crime of the Dark 



162 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

Ages has entered our history ; the soul of Abraham Lincohi is 
transferred from earth to heaven. 

Crime always fails in its purpose ; assassination is everlastingly 
a blunder. Csesar is assassinated ; and imperial sway emerges a 
full-armed despotism from his tomb. William the Silent is 
assassinated ; but the republic of the Netherlands breaks the 
double fetters of superstition and tyranny, and expands into a 
great and flourishing commonwealth. Lincoln is assassinated; 
but he lives to-day in his imperishable example, in his recorded 
words of wisdom, in his great maxims of liberty and enfran- 
chisement. 

The good never die ; to them belongs a double immortality ; 
they perish not upon the earth, and they exist forever in heaven. 
The great primeval lawgiver, entombed for forty centuries in 
that unknown grave in an obscure vale of Moab, to-day legislates 
in your halls of State. Against the Philip of to-day, the dead 
Demosthenes thunders ; the dead Leonidas guards the gates of 
every empire which -wrestles for its sovereignty ; the dead Napo- 
leon still sways France from that silent throne in the Invalides ; 
and the dead Abraham Lincoln will beckon the wavering battle 
line of liberty till the last generation of man 

"Shall creation's death behold 
As Adam saw her prime. " 



THE DREAM OF ONE CONDEMNED. 

A Frenchman named Gustave jSIas had been condemned to be 
hanged for murder. He had killed the seducer of the girl he 
loved. The night before his execution, the jailer, who watched 
him, noticed that, as he slept, the hopeless, Aveary look left his face 
altogether, and often he smiled in his sleep, and sometimes mur- 
mured broken sentences in French ; for he was dreaming — this 
condemned felon. And this was his dream : 



THE DREA3I OF ONE CONDEMNED. 163 

It was summer far away in fair Toiiraiiie in the vineland by 
the Loire ; and it was evening. The evening shadows length- 
ened, the hours chimed mellowly from the gray church tower. 
Slowly the great sun sank in the west, and the crimson and golden 
shafts rose up like the van of a heavenly host — like the spears of 
the archangel's army ranged against the powers of the dark. And 
brushing knee-deep through the clover by the peaceful river-side 
wandered a young man and a maiden. He was a goodly youth 
j and tall, and she was fair to see. Side by side they wandered 
I through that lovely land, and they watched the crimson cloud 
I islands set in a rose red sea, and their shores were sands of silver, 
and their mountains Avere peaked Avith gold. And, in the dream, 
they seemed to wander on and on until they reached the fair 
cloud islands, and there they wandered still along the sands of 
silver and under the peaks of gold — they wandered and were 
happy. 

They never thought that lovers' voices grow silent and lovers' 
kisses cold ; that sand and shingle are weary walking for all their 
silver seeming ; that mountains are tiresome climbing though their 
heights be crested with gold, for they were innocent and young. 

And now the goodly youth — grown early old — slept quietly till 
they came to rouse him in the morning. He rose calmly and 
• prepared himself, and so died calmly and quietly as if his work 
were done. 

In Paris, hard by the river Seine, almost in the shadow of the 
great cathedral's eastern wall, there stands the Morgue. Men 
come in there and speak in whispers and pass out again in silence. 
On that iS"ew Year's morning only one of the terrible metal beds 
was occupied. The corpse was that of a woman, once fair to see, 
grown early old and passed from want and care and crime, per- 
haps, through suicide to death. And her face, too. had lost all 
hopeless, weary look. And the dead lay still in the awful silent 
house, and none came to seek her or to claim her as his own. 

Many came into the silent house that day. There came a 



164 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

philosopher, and he gazed on her and said : " This dead one is ^ 
Aviser than I; she knows the secret; I am only guessing." There t 
came a Christian, and he gazed on her and said : " This is surely ; 
one who sleeps and dreams of the face of Christ." Simple folk ' 
came ; and as they looked on her, the tears rose up to their eyes, 
and a great sweetness stole into their souls, and they went their 
way saying : " Death is less terrible than we thought." For her 
face was as the face of a little child that has fallen asleep in the 
sunshine. 
And this was the maiden from the vineland by the Loire. 



EDWARD EARL'S MURDER OF HIS WIPE. 

As Edward Earl stood that day before his wife, all his miseries 
were before him. The disgrace, dishonor, the long, lonesome 
days, months, years in a prison cell — the desolate home, the ter- 
rible oath were there, and there knelt the woman who had caused 
all, uttering the piteous prayer — " For God's sake, for the sake of 
our little dead children, — have mercy on me." That prayer con- 
quered, disarmed, robbed him of his last hope — revenge. 

He thrcAV the knife at her feet and went out. Where could he 
go ? He had no object in life now ; the hope of vengeance that 
had kept him alive for years had been wrested from him by the 
earnest pleadings of the woman. She thought he had gone, and 
rushing to the door, she called, George ! George ! That was the 
name that was linked with all his sufferings. George had planned, 
she had executed. He was the partner in all her guilt. It was 
George who had induced her to deal him blow after blow until 
reason staggered, and life had become unbearable. This same 
George she Avas now calling for another blow. She called in vain. 
All that he had suffered at their hands came before his eyes, vivid 
as a picture. Her treachery maddened him beyond control. He 



AMERICANS RELIEF TO STARVING IRELAND. 165 

was no longer human ; he was a demon, knowing nothing, fearing 
nothing — wild ! He rushed through the barn ; snatched the knife 
from her hand, and — did he strike ? No ! The years of suffer- 
ing, woe, shame, dishonor, the desolate home, justice, and the 
hated name held the knife and impelled the blow as she shrieked 
"Murder!" 

Murder is a terrible word. There is something horrid about its 
shape as Ave see it in print. But to hear it uttered wildly, pite- 
ously by one once loved — knowing it was the last, last word — oh 
God ! it was horrible. 

He stared in stupid terror for a moment, then like a wild beast 
flew across the fields, the fearful cry of murder ringing in his 
ears — the shy, timid step, the pleading, pitiful look, pursuing and 
keeping pace with him. 

His limbs seemed palsied ; he coidd not flee fast enough. The 
snow once so white now looked red. As he turned the corner 
and fled along the road past the grave-yard, two little voices, that 
had been hushed in death for years, cried "Murder ! Murder !" He 
looked back ; the timid step was near him ! the pitiful, pleading 
look met him ; the cry was in his ears, and he sank fainting on 
the snow ! 



AMERICA'S RELIEF TO STARVING IRELAND. 

Edward A. Terry, 

Only a few weeks ago the fearful news was flashed throughout 
the land that hunger and want had crept into homes beyond the 
seas. In the midst of our teeming granaries and well-stocked 
farms — all our own — in the midst of gathered plenty and pros- 
perous pursuits and warm firesides and the faces of our friends 
that knew no care, a terrible vision arose of a land where hunger 
and gaunt famine and pallid death stalked abroad. 

It is to such a call that the people of America have replied. 



166 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

l^Tiile we may not wonder at the quick response the summons 
found in Irish hearts, which, like the shells of ocean resounding 
ever with the music of the sea, carry abroad with them in exile 
the echoes of the old songs and the old joys and the old love of 
home ; yet, when we see our fellow-citizens of different creeds, 
different nations, and different political aims — knowing us only as 
beseechers of their bounty — come so readily and so sweetly to 
the call, we feel that there is a divinity in the heart of man, and 
that there must be some immortal place for him beyond the sphere 
of time, since all this passing world were far too poor a setting for 
such beauty. 

When I bethink me of your Senate and your place of State 
ordering out its ships of war, made messengers of peace to bear 
the bread of plenty to the scenes of need, the very soul within 
me swells with love and pride of you, my fellow-men. 

Only one such picture did the world ever before see. It was 
when on that stormy night the billows lashed and tossed the little 
bark of the disciples ; and human eyes gazed out into the dark- 
ness, and the cry for help went moaning over the sea ; when, lo I 
a shiniiig light burst full upon their vision, and a form approached, 
walking on the waters and crying to them aloud, amid the winds 
and waves, " Fear not, for it is I." 

I look out upon the world now, and the night of gloom hangs 
heavy on the sea ; — when, hark ! from out a little island hidden 
in the waves, a shriek of anguish tells of suffering and death ; and 
behold ! there comes upon the waters a strong and mighty form, 
moving majestically on her mission of help, the messenger of free- 
dom, the Messiah among the nations, buoyant over every wave, 
and at her mast-head proudly floats that well-known flag of glow- 
ing stars, which, from this hour until the end of time, shall be a 
sign of salvation unto all distress. 



SPEECH FOR DECORATION -DAY. 167 



I SPEECH FOR DECORATION -DAY. 

I Robert Ingersoll. 

' As we cover the graves of the heroic dead with flowers, the 

I past rises before us like a dream. Again we are in the great 

struggle. AVe hear the sounds of preparation — the music of the 

j boisterous drums — the silver voices of heroic bugles. We hear 

the appeals of orators ; we see the pale cheeks of women, and the 

I flushed faces of men ; we see all the dead whose dust we have 

I covered with flowers. We lose sight of them no more. 

I We are with them when they enlist in the great army of free- 

i dom. We see them part from those they love. Some are walk- 

I ing for the last time in the quiet woody places with the maidens 

they adore. We hear the whispers and the sweet vows of eternal 

! love as they lingeringly part forever. Others are bending over 

I cradles kissing babies that are asleep. Some are receiving the 

I blessings of old men. Some are parting who hold them and press 

! them to their hearts again and again, and say nothing ; and some 

are talking with wives, and trying with brave words spoken in 

the old tones to drive from their hearts the awful fear. We see 

them part. We see the wife standing in the door with the babe 

in her arms — standing in the sunlight sobbing ; at the turn of the 

road a hand waves — she answers by holding high in her loving 

arms the child. He is gone and forever. 

We see them all as they march proudly away, under the flaunt- 
ing flags, keeping time to the wild music of war — -marching down 
the streets of the great cities, through the towns, and across the 
]-»rairies, to do and to die for the eternal right. We go with them, 
one and all. We are by their side on all the gory fields, in all 
the hospitals of pain, on all the weary marches. We stand guard 
with them in the wild storm and under the quiet stars. We see 
them pierced with balls and torn by shells in the trenches by the 
forts and in the whirlwind of the charge, where men become iron 
with nerves of steel. We are at home when the news reaches us 




168 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

that they are dead. We see the maiden in the shadow of her 
first sorrow. We see the silvered head of the old man bowed 
with the last grief. in 

Those heroes are dead. They sleep under the solemn pines,™'" 
the sad. hemlocks, the tearful willows, and the embracing vines. 
They sleep beneath the shadows of the clouds, careless alike of 
the sunshine or of storm, each in his windowless place of rest. 
Earth may run red with other wars — they are at peace. In the 
midst of battle, in the roar of the conflict, they found the serenity 
of death. I have one sentiment for the soldiers living and dead, — 
Cheers f 07' the living, tears for tlie dead. 



l!> 



mm 

THE INFLUENCE OF THE ROMAN PRiETOR. -•— ' 

John N. Pomeroy. 

The most gorgeous of all pageants and the most highly sym-i 
bolic of all national acts was a Roman triumph. The laurel- 
cro^vned and purple-robed general leading his fierce and compact 
legions from bloody battle fields, and followed by long trains of 
illustrious captives and by rich spoils of war, as he moved slowly ■] 
along the Sacred AVay, past smoking altars and through vast ^11 
crowds of the populace with their intoxicating shouts "/o tri- 
wmphi^^ was the living exponent of Rome's material power — a 
power which never rested until the world was at her feet. 

As the magnificent and solemn procession swept up to the tem-^ 
pie of the Capitoline Jove, there Avent with it the ideas of uni- 
versal dominion, of uninterrupted success; there was embodied 
in it the thought of Rome, mistress of all nations. 

But the toged prsetor on his judgment-seat, was the exponent 
of a deeper, wider, more vital force ; a force which penetrated 
beyond the reach of armies and conquered when those armies 
were overthrown. He represented the Roman intellectual power, 
the genius for organization, the ideas of order, of civilization. 



«!■ 




KEENAN'S CHARGE. 169 

right and justice. He created a jurisprudence which followed 
! close upon the advancing limits of empire, destroying old national 
! systems and making a people's subjugation complete. 
' He has left a work whose effect on the world's civilization has 
I far surpassed that of Greek philosophy and literature or of Eoman 

conquest. Indeed, his life is prolonged to our own times. The 
j Koman Empire has crumbled, the forum is deserted, but the 

Eoman praetor has ascended the judicial tribunals of all modern 

nations. He sits by the side of the English chancellor ; his spirit 
I animates the decision of British and American judges ; he speaks 
I with Holt and Mansfield and Stowell, with Kent and Story. His 
1 influence will never cease while nations are impelled by sentiments 
I of justice and equity, and their laws are formed upon a basis of 

practical morality. 



e:eenan's charge. 

Geo. p. Lathrop. 

The sun had set ; 

The leaves with dew were wet ; 

Down fell a bloody dusk 

On the woods, that second of May, 

Where Stonewall's corps, like a beast of prey, 

Tore through, with angry tusk. 

" They've trapped us, boys !" 
E-ose from our flank a voice. 
With a rush of steel and smoke 
On came the Eebels straight. 
Eager as love and wild as hate ; 
And our line reeled and broke ; 

Broke and fled. 

No one staid — but the dead ! 



170 



FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 



With curses, shrieks, and cries. 

Horses and wagons and men 

Tumbled back through the shuddering glen, 

And above us the fading skies. 

There's one hope, still, — 
Those batteries parked on the hill ! 
" Battery, wheel !" (mid the roar) 
" Pass pieces ; fix prolonge to fire 
Ketiring. Trot ! " In the panic dire 
A bugle rings " Trot " — and no more. 

The horses plunged, 

The cannon lurched and lunged, 

To join the hopeless rout. 

But suddenly rode a form 

Calmly in front of the human storm, 

With a stern, commanding shout : 

"Align those guns !" 

(We knew it was Pleasanton's.) 

The cannoneers bent to obey. 

And worked with a will, at his word : 

And the black guns moved as if they had heard. 

But ah, the dread delay ! 

To wait is crime ; 

" O God, for ten minutes' time ! " 

The general looked around. 

There Keenan sat, like a stone. 

With his three hundred horse alone — 

Less shaken than the ground. • 



"Major, your men?" — 
"Are soldiers, General." 



Then 



KEEJVAJV'S CHARGE. 171 

Charge, Major ! Do your best ; 

Hold the enemy back, at all cost, 

Till my guns are placed ; — else the army is lost. 

You die to save the rest ! " 

By the shrouded gleam of the western skies, 

Brave Keenan looked in Pleasanton's eyes 

For an instant, — clear and cool and still; 

Then, with a smile, he said : " I will." 

" Cavalry, charge !" JS'ot a man of them shrank. 

Their sharp, full cheer, from rank on rank, 

Rose joyously, with a willing breath. 

Rose like a greeting hail to death. 

Then forward they sprang and spurred and clashed ; 

Shouted the officers, crimson-sashed ; 

Rode well the men, each brave as his fellow. 

In their faded coats of the blue and yellow ; 

And above in the air, with an instinct true, 

Like a bird of war their pennon flew. 

With clank of scabbards and thunder of steeds, 
And blades that shine like sunlit reeds, 
And strong, brown faces bravely pale 
For fear their proud attempt shall fail, 
Three hundred Pennsylvanians close 
On twice ten thousand gallant foes. 

Line after line the troopers came 

To the edge of the wood that was ringed with flame ; 

Rode in and sabered and shot — and fell ; 

Nor came one back his wounds to tell. 

And full in the midst rose Keenan, tall 

In the gloom, like a martyr awaiting his fall, 



172 



FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 



While the circle-strokes of his saber, swung 
Eound his head like a halo there, luminous hung. 
Line after line, ay, whole platoons. 
Struck dead in their saddles, of brave dragoons 
By the maddened horses were onward borne. 
And into the vortex flung, trampled and torn ; 
As Keenan fought with his men, side by side. 
So they rode, till there were no more to ride. 

But over them, lying there, shattered and mute. 
What deep echo rolls 1 — 'Tis a death-salute 
From the cannon in place ; for, heroes, you braved 
Your fate not in vain : the army was saved ! 

Over them now, — year following year, — 

Over their graves, the pine-cones fall, 

And the whip-poor-will chants his specter-call ; 

But they stir not again ; they raise no cheer : 

They have ceased. But their glory shall never cease, 

Nor their light be quenched in the light of peace. 

The rush of their charge is resounding still 

That saved the armv at Chancellorsville. 



THE WORLD'S INDEBTEDNESS TO ATHENS. 

T. B. ilACAULAT. 

All the triumphs of truth and genius over prejudice and power, 
in every country and in every age, have been the triumphs of 
Athens. "\\"herever a few great minds have made a stand against 
violence and fraud, in the cause of liberty and reason, there has 
been her spirit in the midst of them — inspiring, encouraging, con- 
soling ; by the lonely lamp of Erasmus ; by the restless bed of 



THE WORLD'S INDEBTEDNESS TO ATHENS. 173 

Pascal ; in the tribune of Mirabeau ; in the cell of Galileo ; on 
the scaffold of Sidney. 

But who shall estimate her influence on private happiness'? 
Who shall say how many thousands have been made wiser, hap- 
pier, and better, by those pursuits in which she has taught man- 
kind to engage ? to how many the studies which took their rise 
from her have been wealth in poverty, liberty in bondage, health 
in sickness, society in solitude 1 Her power is indeed manifested 
at the bar, in the senate, in the field of battle, in the schools of 
philosophy. But these are not her glory. Wherever literature 
consoles sorrow or assuages pain, wherever it brings gladness to 
eyes which fail with wakefulness and tears, and ache for the dark 
house and the long sleep, there is exhibited in its noblest form 
the immortal influence of Athens. 

The dervise, in the Arabian tale, did not hesitate to abandon 
to his comrade the camels with their load of jewels and gold, 
while he retained the casket of that mysterious juice which enabled 
him to behold at one glance all the hidden riches of the universe. 
Surely it is no exaggeration to say that no external advantage is 
to be compared with that purification of the intellectual eye which 
gives us to contemplate the infinite wealth of the mental world, 
all the hoarded treasures of its primeval dynasties, all the shape- 
less ore of its yet unexplored mines. 

This is the gift of Athens to man. Her freedom and her power 
have for more than twenty centuries been annihilated ; her people 
have degenerated into timid slaves ; her language into a barbarous 
jargon ; her temples have been given up to the successive depre- 
dations of Romans, Turks, and Scotchmen; but her intellectual 
empire is imperishable. And when those who have rivaled her 
greatness shall have shared her fate ; when civilization and knowl- 
edge shall have fixed their abode in distant continents ; when the 
scepter shall have passed away from England ; when, perhaps, 
travelers from distant regions shall in vain labor to decipher on 
some mouldering pedestal the name of our proudest chief, her 



174 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

influence and her glory will still survive, fresh in eternal youth, 
" exempt from mutability and decay, immortal as the intellectual 
principle from which they derived their origin, and over which 
they exercise their control." 



THE STUDY OF ASTRONOMY. 

O. M. MiTCHEL, 

Astronomy is no feast of fancy with music and poetry, with 
eloquence and art to enchain the mind. Music is here ; but it is 
the deep and solemn harmony of the spheres. Poetry is here ; 
but it must be read in the characters of light written on the sable 
garments of night. Architecture is here ; but it is the colossal 
structure of sun and system, of cluster and universe. Eloquence 
is here ; but there is neither speech nor language. Its voice is 
not heard ; yet its resistless sweep comes over us in the mighty 
periods of revolving worlds. 

Shall we not listen to this music, because it is deep and solemn ? 
Shall we not read this poetry, because its letters are the stars of 
heaven ? Shall we refuse to contemplate this architecture,- because 
its "architraves, its archways seem ghostly from infinitude"] 
1^0 : the mind is ever inquisitive, ever ready to attempt to scale 
the most rugged steeps. 

Go with me in imagination and join in the nightly vigils of the 
astronomer ; and while his mind, with powerful energy, struggles 
with difficulty, join your own sympathetic efl^orts with Ms ; hope 
with his hope ; tremble with his fears ; rejoice with his triumphs. 

The astronomer has ever lived and never dies. The sentinel 
upon the watch-tower is relieved from duty, but another takes his 
place, and the vigil is unbroken. Xo : the astronomer never dies. 
He commences his investigation on the hiU-tops of Eden; he 
studies the stars through the long centuries of antediluvian life. 
The deluge sweeps from the earth its inliabitants, their cities, and 
their monuments ; but when the storm is hushed and the heavens 



THE EXECUTION OF MONTROSE. 175 

shine forth in beauty, from the summit of Mt. Ararat the astrono- 
mer resumes his endless vigils. The plains of Shinar, the tem- 
' pies of India, the pyramids of Egypt are equally his watching 
! places. When science fled to Greece, her home was in the schools 
I of her philosophers ; and when darkness covered the earth for a 
I thousand years, he pursued his never-ending task from amidst the 
I burning deserts of Arabia. When science dawned on Europe, the 
astronomer was there, toiling with Copernicus, watching with 
Tycho, suffering with Galileo, triumphing with Kepler. 

Six thousand years have rolled away since the grand investiga- 
tion commenced. Midway between the past and the future we 
sweep backward and witness the first rude effort to explain the 
celestial phenomena ; we may equally stretch forward thousands 
of years ; and, although we cannot comprehend what may be the 
condition of astronomical science at that remote period, of one 
thing we are certain, — the past, the present, and the future con- 
stitute but one unbroken chain of observations condensing all 
time, to the astronomer, into one mighty " Now." 



THE EXECUTION OF MONTROSE. 

They brought him to the Water-gate, 

Hard bound with hempen span, 
As though they held a Kon there, 

And not a fenceless man. 
They set him high upon a cart — 

The hangman rode below ; 
They drew his hands behind his back, 

And bared his noble brow. 
Then, as a hound is slipped from leash, 

They cheered — the common throng, 
And blew the note with yell and shout 

And bade him pass along. 



Aytoun. 



176 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 



They placed him next 

Within the solemn hall 
"Where once the Scottish kings were throned 

Amid their nobles all. 
But there was dust of vulgar feet 

On that polluted floor, 
And perjured traitors filled the place 

Where good men sate before. 
With savage glee came Warristoun 

To read the murderous doom ; 
And then uprose the great Montrose 

In the middle of the room. 

" Now, by my faith as belted knight, 

And by the name I bear. 
And by the bright St. Andrew's cross 

That waves above us there. 
Yea, by a greater, mightier oath, — 

And O that such should be ! — 
By that dark stream of royal blood 

That lies 'twixt you and me, — 
I have not sought in battle field 

A wreath of such renown, 
Nor dared I hope on my dying day 

To win the martyr's cro'vvn. 

" There is a chamber far away , 

Where sleep the good and brave ; 
But a better place ye have named for me 

Than by my father's grave. 
For truth and right, 'gainst treason's might, 

This hand hath always striven ; 
And ye raise it up for a witness still 

In the eye of earth and heaven. 



THE EXECUTION OF MONTROSE. 177 

Then nail my head on yonder tower, 

Give every town a limb ; 
And God who made shall gather them : 

I go from you to Him." 

The morning dawned full darkly, 

The rain came flashing down, 
And the jagged streak of the levin-bolt 

Lit up the gloomy to^^^l ; 
The thunder crashed across the heaven — 

The fatal hour was come : 
Yet aye broke in with muffled beat 

The larum of the drum. 
There was madness on the earth below. 

And anger in the sky ; 
And young and old, and rich and poor, 

Came forth to see him die. 

" He is coming ! he is coming !" 

Like a bridegroom from his room. 
Came the hero from liis prison 

To the scaffold and the doom. 
There was glory on his forehead, 

There was luster in his eye. 
And he never walked to battle 

More proudly than to die. 
There was color in his visage. 

Though the cheeks of all were wan ; 
And they marveled as they saw him pass, 

That great and goodly man. 

He mounted up the scaff'old, 

And he turned him to the crowd ; 
But they dare not trust the people, 

So he might not speak aloud. 



178 FRANKLIN SPEAKER, 

But lie looked upon the heavens, 

And they were clear and blue, 
And in the liquid ether 

The eye of God shone through. 
Yet a black and murky battlement 

Lay resting on the hiU, 
As though the thunder slept within — 

All else was calm and still. 

A beam of light fell o'er him, 

Like a glory round the shriven. 
And he climbed the lofty ladder 

As it were the path to heaven. 
Then came a flash from out the cloud. 

And a stunning thunder roll ; 
And no man dared to look aloft. 

For fear was on ev'ry soul. 
There was another heavy sound, 

A hush, and then a groan, 
And darkness swept across the sky — 

The work of death was done. 



MEN OF GENITJS. 

H. W. LOXGFELLOW. 

It has become a common sajing, that men of genius are always 
in advance of their age. There is something equally true, yet not 
so common ; namely, that of these men of genius, the best and 
bravest are in advance not only of their OAvn age, but of every age. 
As the German prose poet says, every possible future is behind 
them. We cannot suppose that a period of time will ever come, 
when the world, or any considerable portion of it, shall have come 
up abreast with these great minds, so as fully to comprehend 
them. 



THE PRESS AND PROVIDENCE, 179 

And oh ! how majestically they walk in history ; some like the 
sun, with all his traveling glories round him ; others wrapped in 
gloom, yet glorious as a night with stars. Through the else silent 
darkness of the past, the spirit hears their slow and solemn foot- 
steps. Onward they pass, like those heavenly elders seen in the 
sublime vision of an earthly paradise, attendant angels bearing 
golden lights before them, and, above and behind, the whole air 
painted with seven listed colors, as from the trail of pencils ! 

And yet, on earth, these men were not happy — not all happy, 
in the outward circumstances of their lives. They were in want, 
I and in pain, and familiar with prison bars, and the damp, weeping 
walls of dungeons ! Oh, I have looked with wonder upon those, 
who, in sorrow and privation, and bodily discomfort and sickness, 
which is the shadow of death, have worked right on to the accom- 
plishment of their great purposes ; toiling much, enduring much, 
fulfilling much ; — and then, with shattered nerves, and sinews all 
unstrung, have laid themselves down in the grave, and slept the 
sleep of death, — and the world talks of them, while they sleep. 

It would seem, indeed, as if all their sufferings had but sancti- 
fied them ! As if the death-angel, in passing, had touched them 
with the hem of his garment, and made them holy ! As if the 
hand of disease had been stretched out over them only to make 
the sign of the cross upon their soals. And as in the sun's eclipse 
we can behold the great stars shining in the heavens, so in this 
life's eclipse have these men beheld the lights of the great eternity, 
burning solemnly and forever ! 



THE PRESS AND PROVIDENCE. 

John Lanahan. 

A MAN in Holland whiles away an hour cutting letters on the 
bark of a tree. To amuse his children, he transfers the impression 
to paper. The idea is seized and carried out by others until print- 
ing becomes a practical art. Though in its discovery the mere 



180 FRANKLIK SPEAKER. 

man of the world may see only tlie means of extending civilization 
and science, the student of Providence sees far more. To his eye 
it is the wonder-working rod that shall turn the rock into a hving 
fountain, whose fertihzing streams shall flow all along the byways 
and highways of social, political, and spiritual good, causing " the 
wilderness and the solitary places to be glad, and the desert to 
rejoice and blossom as the rose." 

The press has sounded the bugle-note of hope to the oppressed 
and despairing throughout the world by sending forth the Word 
of Life in more than half of the languages of the globe. It is 
" Pentecost triumphing over Babel." It champions the tongue and 
the pen, catching up their words, and making the knowledge they 
impart imperishable. Giving material form to speech, which is 
mere breath, it enthrones man upon a height from which he can 
speak to the whole world in all its generations. Xo tyrant can 
chain it, and he who would sit as censor of its issues might as 
well take his seat over the mouth of old Vesuvius or burning 
vEtna. 

In the hands of the patriot, it is the engine with which he 
strikes down the battlements of despotism. In the hands of the 
reformer, it is the lever with which he uplifts the sunken nation. 
It is the " electric tongue of thought," whose every motion is felt 
across continents, under oceans, and round the world. Now, who 
could have imagined that the little circumstance of a man's cutting 
letters on the bark of a tree, and taking the impression on paper, 
should be made subservient to the mental, moral, and spiritual 
illumination of the human race to the end of time 1 

Men are wont to call these fortuitous occurrences mere liappen- 
ings. Xo ; they are appointments of God as tridy as He appointed 
the sun to give light by day and the moon and stars for brightness 
by night. They are trees of His planting. Eternal summer war- 
bles among their boughs ; they yield their fruit every month, and 
their leaves are for the healing of the nations. 



SUNRISE, 181 



SUNRISE. 

Edward Everett. 

\ I HAD occasion, a few weeks since, to take the early train from 
I Providence to Boston ; and for this purpose arose at two o'clock in 
the morning. Every thing around us was wrapped in darkness 
I and hushed in silence, broken only, by what seemed at that hour, 
I the unearthly clank and rush of the train. It was a mild, serene, 
j midsummer night ; and the sky was without a cloud ; the winds 
: were whist. The moon, then in the last quarter, had just risen ; 
j and the stars shone with a spectral luster, but little affected by 
I her presence. Jupiter, two hours high, was the herald of the 
I day ; the Pleiades, just above the horizon, shed their sweet influ- 
ence in the east; Lyra sj rkled near the zenith; Andromeda 
veiled her newly-discovered glories from the naked eye in the 
south ; the steady Pointers, far beneath the pole, looked meekly 
up from the depths of the north to their sovereign. 

As we proceeded, the timid approach of twilight became more 
perceptible. The intense blue of the sky began to soften ; the 
small stars, like little children, went first to rest. Steadily the 
wondrous transfiguration went on. Hands of angels, hidden from 
mortal eyes, shifted the scenery of the heavens ; the glories of the 
night dissolved into the glories of the dawn. The blue sky now 
turned more softly gray ; the great watch-stars shut up their holy 
eyes; the east began to kindle. Faint streaks of purple soon 
blushed along the sky ; the whole celestial concave was filled with 
the inflowing tides of the morning light which came pouring down 
from above in one great ocean of radiance ; till at length, as we 
reached the Blue Hills, a flash of purple fire blazed out from above 
the horizon, and turned the dewy tear-drops of flower and leaf into 
rubies and diamonds. In a few seconds, the everlasting gates of 
the morning were thrown wide open ; and the lord of day, arrayed 
in glories too severe for the gaze of man, began his state. 

From the Arctic pole to the equator, from the equator to the 



182 FRANKLIN SPEAKER, 

Antarctic pole, this eternal sun strikes twelve at noon ; and the 
glorious constellations, far up in the everlasting belfries of the 
skies, chime twelve at midnight; — twelve for the pale student 
over his flickering lamp ; tivelve amid the flaming wonders of 
Orion's belt, if he crosses the meridian at that fated hour ; twelve 
by the weary couch of suffering humanity ; twelve in the star- 
paved courts of the Empyrean ; twelve for the heaving tides of 
the ocean ; twelve for the toiling brain ; twelve for the watching, 
waking, broken heart ; twelve for the meteor which blazes for a 
moment and then expires ; twelve for the come.t whose period is 
measured by centuries; twelve for every substantial, every im- 
aginary thing referred to the lapse of time. 

I do not wonder at the ancient Magians, who in the morning of 
the world went up to the hill- tops of Central Asia, and, ignorant 
of the only true God, worshiped the most wonderful work of His 
hands; but I am filled with amazement, that, in this age and 
land, there are those who can look upon the rising and setting of 
the sun, and yet say, " There is no God.^^ 



THE VICTOR OF MARENGO. 

Kapoleon was sitting in his tent. Before him lay the map of 
Italy. He took four pins, stuck them up, measured, moved the 
pins, and measured again. " Xow," said he, " that is right. I 
will capture him there." "Who, sire?" said an officer. "Melas, 
the old fox of Austria. He will return from Genoa, pass through 
Turin, and fall back on Alexandria. I will cross the Po, meet 
hiui on the plains of La Servia, and conquer him there." And the 
finger of the child of destiny pointed to ^Marengo. 

But God thwarted Napoleon's schemes. In the gorges of the 
Alps a few drops of water had fallen, and the Po could not be 
crossed in time. The battle was begun. Melas, pushed to the 
wall by Lannes, resolved to cut his way out ; and Xapoleon reached 



THE VICTOR OF MARENGO. 183 

! the field to find Lannes beaten, Champeaux dead, and Kellerman 

! still cKarging. Old Melas poured his Austrian phalanx on Ma- 

I rengo till the consular guard gave way, and the well-planned 

; victory of Xapoleon became a terrible defeat. 

j Just as the day was lost, Desaix, the boy general, came sweep- 
ing across the field at the head of his cavalry, and halted near the 

I eminence where stood K"apoleon. In the corps was a drummer boy, 
a gamin, whom Desaix had picked up in the streets of Paris, and 
who had followed the victorious eagles of France in the campaigns 
of Egypt and Austria. 

As the column halted, N^apoleon shouted to him : " Beat a 
retreat." The boy did not stir. " Gamin, beat a retreat !" The 

I boy grasped his drum-sticks, stepped forward and said: "0 sire, 
I don't know how. Desaix never taught me that. But I can 
beat a charge. Oh ! I can beat a charge that would make the 
dead fall in line. I beat that charge at the Pyramids once, and I 
beat it at Mt. Tabor, and I beat it again at the bridge of Lodi, 

land oh ! may I beat it here ?" 

Napoleon turned to Desaix : " We are beaten ; what shall we 
del" " Do ? Beat them. It is only three o'clock ; there is time 
to win a victory yet. Up ! gamin, the charge ! Beat the old 
charge of Mt. Tabor and Lodi ! " A moment later the corps, fol- 
lowing the sword-gleam of Desaix, and keeping step to the furious 
roU of the gamin's drum, swept down on the host of Austria. 
They drove the first line back on the second, the second back on 
the third, and there they died. Desaix fell at the first volley ; but 
the line never faltered. As the smoke cleared away, the gamin 
was seen in front of the line, marching right on, still beating the 
furious charge. 

Over the dead and wounded, over the breastworks and ditches, 
over the cannon and rear-guard, he led the way to victory ; — and 
the fifteen days in Italy were ended 

To-day men point to Marengo with wonderment. They laud 
the power and foresight that so skillfully planned the battle ; but 



184 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

they forget that Napoleon failed. They forget that he was d^ 
feated. They forget how a little general, only thirteen years old, 
made a victory of the Corsican's defeat ; and how a gamin of 
Paris put to shame the child of destiny. 



THE SHIP ON FIRE. 

Henry Batemax. 

Morning ! all speedeth well : the bright sun 
Lights up the deep blue wave, and favoring breeze 
Fills the white sails, while o'er that Southern Sea 
The ship, with all the busy hfe within. 
Holds on her ocean course alone, but glad ; 
For all is yet, as all has been the while 
Since the white cliffs were left, without or fear 
Or danger to those hundreds grouping now 
Upon the sunny deck. 

Fire ! — Fire ! — Fire ! — Fire ! 

T* •!• V •!* 

Scorching smoke in many a MTeath, 

Sulphurous blast of heated air, 
Grim presentment of quick death. 

Crouching fear and stern despair. 
Hist to what the master saith, — 
" Steady, steersman, steady there 1 " — Ay ! ay ! 



" To the mast-head ! " — it is done ; 

" Look to leeward ! " — scores obey ; 
" And to windward ! " — many a one 

Turns, and never turns away : 
Steadfast is the word and tone, — 
" Man the boats, and clear away ! " — Ay ! ay ! 



1 



THE SHIP ON FIRE. 185 

Hotter ! hotter ! — heave and strain ; 

In the hollow, on the wave : 
" Pump ! and flood the deck again ; — • 

Work ! no danger daunts the brave : 
Hope and trust are not in vain, — 
God looks on, and He can save." — Ay ! ay ! 

" What above V — nor sail, nor sound ; 

" Leeward ?" — nothing, far or near ; 
"What to windward?" — to the bound 

Of the horizon all is clear ; — 
Yet again the words go round, 
" Work, men, work ; we dare not fear ! " — Ay ! ay ! 

Hotter ! hotter ! hotter still ! 

Backward driven every one ; 
All in vain the various skill ; 

All that man may do is done : 
" Brave hearts, strive yet with a will ! 
Never deem that hope is gone ! " — Ay ! ay ! 

Hist ! — as if a sudden thought 

Dared not utter what it knew, — 
Falls a trembling whisper, fraught 

As of hope, to frightened few ; 

With a doubting heart-ache caught, 

And a choking " Is it true ?" — Ay ! ay ! 

There it comes, — "A sail ! a sail !" 

Up from prostrate misery, 
Up from heart-break, woe, and wail, 

Up to shuddering ecstasy ; — 
" Can so strange a promise fail V — 
" Call the master ; let him see ! " — Ay ! ay ! 



186 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

Silence ! Silence ! Silence !— Pray ! 

V ?!• ^ H* 

Every moment is an hour, 

Minutes long as weary years, 
While with concentrated power 

Through the haze that clear eye peers, — 
" No " — " Yes " — " 1^0 :" the strong men cower. 
Till he sighs, faith conquering fear, — "Ay ! ay !" 

Eiseth now the throbbing cry, 

Born of hope and hopelessness ; 
Iron men weep bitterly. 

Unused hands and cheeks caress ; — 
Feeling's wild variety — 
Strange and heartless Avere it less. — Ay ! ay ! 

Through the sunlight's glittering gleam, 

On old Ocean's rugged breast. 
As a fantasy in dream ; 

Yet beyond all doubt confessed, 
Comes the ship — God's gift they deem : 
Ah., " He overruleth best ! " — Ay ! ay ! 

Coming ! — come ! — that foremost man 

Shouts as only true heart may, 
" Ship on fire ! "— " You will "— " You can "— 

" Near us, for the rescue, stay ?" 
Almost as the words began, 
Answering words are on their way, — "Ay ! ay !" 

" Ay ! ay !" — words of little worth 

But as imaging the soul. 
See, the boats are struggling forth ! — 

Marvel ! how they pitch and roll 
On the dark wave, through the froth ! 
God can brinsjj them safe and whole. — Av ! av ! 



THE DEATH OF GARFIELD, 187 

" Have a care, men ! have a care ! — 

Steady, steady to the stern : 
Now, my brave hearts, handy there,- — 

See, the deck begins to burn ! 
Child and woman, soft and fair, 
Go — thank God : Be quick — return." — Ay ! ay ! 

All is well ! the last man true 

Stands upon the stranger's deck, 
And a thrilling pulse runs through 

Those glad hearts, which none may check ; 
Listen to the wild halloo ! 
Eainbow joy, in fortune's wreck. — Ay ! ay ! 

Pah ! — a rush of smothered light 

Bursts the staggering ship asunder, — 
Lightning flashes, fierce and bright, — 

Blasting sounds, as if of thunder, — 
Dread Destruction wins the fight. 
Round about, above, and under ! — Ay ! ay ! 



THE DEATH OF GARFIELD. 

James G. Blaine. 

Great in life, Garfield was surpassingly great in death. For 
no cause, in the very frenzy of wantonness, by the red hand of 
murder, he was thrust from the full tide of this world's interest, 
from its hopes, its aspirations, its victories, into the visible 
presence of death — and he did not quail. Not alone for the one 
short moment in which, stunned and dazed, he could give up life 
hardly aware of its relinquishment, but through days of deadly 
languor, through weeks of agony, that was not less agony because 
silently borne, with clear sight and calm courage he looked into 
his open grave. 



188 FRANKLIN SPEAKER, 

AYliat blight and ruin met his anguished eyes, whose lips may 
telll — what brilliant, broken plans, what baffled, high ambitions, 
what sundering of strong, warm, manhood's friendshijDs, what 
bitter rending of sweet household ties ! Behind him a proud, 
expectant nation ; a great host of sustaining friends ; a cherished 
and happy mother, wearing the full, rich honors of her early toil 
and tears ; the wife of his youth, whose whole life lay in his ; 
the little boys not yet emerged from childhood's day of froHc, the 
fair, 3"oung daughter ; the sturdy sons just springing into closest 
companionship, claiming every day, and every day rewarding a 
father's love and care ; and in his heart the eager, rejoicing power 
to meet all demands. Before him, desolation and great darkness ! 
And his soul was not shaken. 

His countrymen were thrilled with instant, profound7 and uni- 
versal sympathy. Masterful in his mortal weakness, he became 
the center of a nation's love, enshrined in the prayers of a world. 

But all the love and all the sympathy could not share with him 
his suffering. He trod the wine-press alone. With unfailing 
tenderness he took ieave of life. Above the demoniac hiss of the 
assassin's bullet he heard the voice of God. With simple resigna- 
tion he bowed to the Divine decree. 

As the end drew near, his early craving for the sea returned. 
The stately mansion of power had been to him the wearisome 
hospital of pain, and he begged to be taken from its prison walls, 
from its oppressive, stifling air, from its homelessness and its 
hopelessness. Gently, silently, the love of a great people bore 
the pale sufferer to the longed-for healiug of the sea, to live or to 
die, as God should will, within sight of its heaving billows, Mdthiii 
sound of its manifold voices. 

With wan, fevered face tenderly lifted to the cooling breeze, he 
looked out wistfully upon the ocean's changing wonders ; on its 
far sails, whitening in the morning light ; on its restless waves, 
roiling shoreward to break and die beneath the noonday sun ; on 
the red clouds of evening, arching low to the horizon ; on the 



EXTREME UNCTION. 189 

! serene and shining pathway of the stars. Let us think that his 
! dying eyes read a mystic meaning which only the rapt and parting 
i sou] may know. Let us believe that in the silence of the receding 
' world he heard the great waves breaking on a farther shore, and 
I felt already upon his wasted brow the breath of the eternal 
morning. 



EXTREME UNCTION. 

James Russell Lowell. 

Call, if thou canst, to those gray eyes 
Some faith from youth's traditions wrung : 
This fruitless husk which dustward dries 
Has been a heart once, has been young. 
On this bowed head the awful Past 
Once laid its consecrating hands : 
The Future in its purpose vast 
Paused, waiting my supreme commands. 

But look ! whose shadows block the door? 
Who are those two that stand aloof 1 
See ! on my hands, this freshening gore 
Writes o'er again its crimson proof ; 
My looked-for death-bed guests are met : — 
There my dead Youth doth wring its hands ; 
And there, with eyes that goad me yet. 
The ghost of my Ideal stands. 

God bends from out the deep and says — 
" I gave thee the great gift of life : 
Wast thou not called in many ways ? 
Are not my earth and heaven at strife ? 
I gave thee of my seed to sow : 
Bringest thou me my hundred-fold ?" — 



190 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

Can I look up with face aglow, 
And answer, " Father, here is gold f 

I have been innocent : God knows 
When first this wasted hfe began 
Not grape with grape more kindly grows 
Than I -with every brother-man. 
Kow here I gasp : what lose my kind, 
When this fast-ebbing breath shall part ? 
"WTiat bands of love and service bind 
This being to the world's sad heart 1 

4: 4: 4s 4: « 

Upon the hour when I was born, 
God said, "Another man shall be ;" 
And the great Maker did not scorn 
Out of Himself to fashion me : 
He sunned me with His ripening looks 
And heaven's rich instincts in me grew 
As effortless as woodland nooks 
Send violets up, and paint them blue. 

Yes ! I who now, with angry tears 

Am exiled back to brutish clod. 

Have borne unquenched for fourscore years 

A spark of the eternal God. 

And to what end ? How yield I back 

The trust for such high uses given 1 — 

Heaven's light hath but revealed a track 

Whereby to crawl away from heaven. 

Men think it is an awfid sight 

To see a soul just set adrift 

On that drear voyage from whose night 

The ominous shadows never lift. 



iVi^TT ENGLAND AND NEW FRANCE. 191 

But 'tis more awful to behold 
A helpless infant newly born 
Whose little hands unconscious hold 
The keys of darkness and of morn. 

Mine held them once ; I flung away 
Those keys that might have open set 
The golden sluices of the day, 
But clutch the keys of darkness yet : — 
I hear the reapers singing go 
Into God's harvest : I, that might 
With them have chosen, here below 
Grope shuddering at the gates of night. 

glorious Youth, that once wast mine ! 
O high Ideal ! all in vain 
Ye enter at this ruined shrine 
Wlience worship ne'er shall rise again ; 
The bat and owl inhabit here ; 
The snake nests in the altar-stone ! 
The sacred vessels molder near ; 
The image of the God is gone. 



NEW ENGLAND AND NEW FRANCE. 

Francis Parkman. 

By name, local position, and character, two communities, New 
England and New France, stand forth as most conspicuous repre- 
sentatives of the antagonism between liberty and absolutism. 
The one was the offspring of a triumphant government ; the other 
of an oppressed and fugitive people ; the one an unflinching cham- 
pion of re-action ; the other a vanguard of reform. Each followed 
its natural laws of gro^vth, and each came to its natural result. 

Vitalized by the principles of its foundation, the Puritan com- 



192 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

mon wealth grew apace. Xew England was preeminently the land :j 
of material progress. Here the prize was within every man's 
reach ; patient industry need never doubt its reward ; nay, assi- 
duity in the pursuit of gain was promoted to the rank of a duty, 
and thrift and greediness were linked in equivocal wedlock. She 
grew upon the world a signal example of expansive energy ; but jj 
she has not been fruitful in those salient and striking forms of 
character which often give a dramatic life to the annals of nations 
far less prosperous. 

We turn to New France, and all is reversed. Here was a bold 
attempt to stifle under the curbs and trappings of a feudal mon- 
archy, a people compassed by influences of the wildest freedom, i 
whose schools were the forests and the sea, whose trade was an 
armed barter with savages, and whose daily life a lesson of lawless 
independence. But tliis fierce spirit had its vent. The story of 
New France is, from the first, a story of war, — of war, for so her 
founders believed, with the adversary of mankind himself — war 
with savage tribes and potent forest commonwealths, war with the 
encroaching poAvers of heresy and England. 

The growth of New England was a result of the aggregate 
efforts of a busy multitude, each in his narrow circle, toiling for 
himself to gather competence or wealth. The expansion of New 
France was the achievement of a gigantic ambition striving to 
grasp a continent. It was a vain attempt. The French dominion 
is a memory of the past ; and when we invoke its departed shades, 
they rise upon us from their graves in strange romantic guise. - 
Again their ghostly camp-fires seem to burn, and the fitful light 
is cast around on lord and vassal, mingled with wild forms of 
savage warriors, knit in close fellowship on the same stern errand. ; 

A boundless vision grows upon us ; mountains silent in primeval ^ 
sleep ; river, lake, and glimmering pool ; wilderness oceans min- \ 
gling with the sky. Such was the domain Avhich France conquered f 
for civilization. Plumed helmets gleamed in the shade of its 
forests ; priestly vestments in its dens and fastnesses of ancient 



REVOLUTIONS. 193 

barbarism. Men steeped in antique learning here spent the noon 
and evening of their lives, ruled savage hordes with mild, parental 
.^way, and stood serene before the direst shapes of death. Men of 
courtly nature, heirs to the polish of a far-reaching ancestry, here 
with their dauntless hardihood put to shame the boldest sons 
of toil. 



REVOLUTIONS. 

T. B. Macaulay. 

It is very possible that, if a people brought up under an intol- 
erant and arbitrary system, could subvert that system without acts 
of cruelty and folly, half the objections to despotic power would 
be removed. We deplore the outrages which accompany revolu- 
tions. But the more violent the outrages, the more assuredly we 
feel that a revolution was necessary. The violence of those out- 
rages will always be proportioned to the ferocity and ignorance of 
the people ; and the ferocity and ignorance of the people will be 
proportioned to the oppression and degradation under which they 
have been accustomed to Uve. 

Thus it was in our civil war. The government had prohibited 
free discussion ; it had done its best to keep the people unac- 
quainted with their duties and their rights. The retribution was 
just and natural. If our rulers suffered from popular ignorance, 
it was because they had themselves taken away the key of knowl- 
edge. If they were assailed with blind fury, it was because they 
had exacted an equally blind submission. 

It is the character of such revolutions, that we always see the 
worst of them at first. Till men have been some time free, they 
know not how to use their freedom. The final and permanent 
fruits of liberty are wisdom, moderation, and mercy. Its imme- 
diate effects are often atrocious crimes, conflicting errors, scepti- 
cism on points the most clear, dogmatism on points the most mys- 
terious. It is just at this crisis that its enemies love to exhibit it. 
9 



194 



FkANKLIN SPEAKER. 



They pull down the scaffolding from the half-finished edifice ; they 
point to the falling bricks, the comfortless rooms, the frightful 
irregularity of the whole appearance ; and then ask in scorn where 
the promised splendor and comfort are to be found. If such 
miserable sophisms were to prevail, there would never be a good 
house or a good government in the world. m 

There is only one cure for the evils which newly-acquired free- 
dom produces, and that cure is freedom. A\'lien a prisoner first 
leaves his cell, he cannot bear the light of day ; he is unable to 
discriminate colors or recognize faces. But the remedy is, not to 
remand him to his dungeon, but to accustom him to the rays of 
the sun. The blaze of truth and liberty may at first dazzle and 
bewilder nations which have become half blind in the house of 
bondage. But let them gaze on, and they will soon be able to 
bear it. 

Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying it down 
as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till 
they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the 
fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water until 
he had learned to swim. If men are to wait for liberty till they 
become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed wait forever. 



il 



THE LOSS OF THE "BIRKENHEAD." 

Sir F. H. Doyle. 

Right on our flank the crimson sun went down, 

The deep sea rolled around in dark repose, 
AVlien, like the wild shriek from some captured town, 
A cry of women rose. 

The stout ship Birl'enhead lay hard and fast. 
Caught, without hope, upon a hidden rock ; 
Her timbers thrilled as nerves, when through them passed 
The spirit of that shock. 



THE LOSS OF THE ^^ BIRKENHEAD.'' 195 

And ever, like base cowards who leave their ranks 

In danger's hour, before the rush of steel, 
Drifted away, disorderly, the planks. 

From underneath her keel. 

Confusion spread ; for, though the coast seemed near, 

Sharks hovered thick along that white sea-brink. 
The boats could hold 1 — not all — and it was clear 
She was about to sink. 

" Out with those boats, and let us haste away," 

Cried one, " ere yet yon sea the bark devours." 
The man thus clamoring was, I scarce need say, 
No officer of ours. 

We knew our duty better than to care 

For such loose babblers, and made no reply ; 
Till our good colonel gave the word, and there 
Formed us in line — to die. 

There rose no murmur from the ranks, no thought 

By shameful strength unhonored life to seek ; 
Our post to quit we were not trained, nor taught 
To trample down the weak. 

So we made women with their children go. 
The oars ply back again, and yet again ; 
Whilst, inch by inch, the drowning ship sank low, 
Still under steadfast men. 

"VAHiat followed why recall '? The brave who died, 

Died without flinching in the bloody surf. 
They sleep as well beneath that purple tide, 
As others under turf. 



196 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 



TIME AND PASSION. 

Louise de la Ram^e. 

The stars were bright ; the murmurs of innumerable torrents ; 
filled the silence ; the heavy odors of a million pines rose up from 
below; and over the far Danubian plains, the woods trembled as; 
though stirred by the shadowy hosts of Persian myriads and of i 
Scythian chiefs, of Roman legions and of Avar hordes, whose . 
bones had whitened in their eternal sands, and whose graves were , 
locked in their funereal depths. I 

It was profoundly still, while from the convent tower the mid- 
night strokes fell slowly, beating out the flight of time, that in its 
merciless, eternal movement had left of the Great King but the 
writing on the wall, but the mute story of Ass}Tian stones ; and 
that had swept down, like insects of a summer day, the mailed 
and mighty cohorts who once had passed the windings of the Ister 
with shouts of "Ave Caesar Imperator" proudly heralding the 
passage of the last Constantine. 

Where were they the innumerable peoples of the past 1 Where 
were they? — bright Greek and delicate Persian, ravening Hun 
and haughty Latin, swift Scythian and black-browed Tartar, brute 
Mogul and patrician Roman, whose bones lay buried there un- 
marked, unparted in the community of the grave ? Tlie Danube 
rolled along its majestic waters, while centuries and cycles passed, 
sweeping onward under the same suns that once flashed on the 
diadem of Darius, flowing in solemn melody through the night, 
under the same stars which the wistful eyes of Julian once studied 
in the still, lonely watches of his tent. The river was living still, 
dark and changeless, rushing ever onward to the sea ; but they 
the fleeting and innumerable phantoms, the generations of the 
dead, were gone for evermore. 

As he stood there in the midnight solitude, it seemed to him as 
if, in the midst of his virile and adventurous life, he suddenly 
paused for the first time : and thought itself paused Avith him. 



THE CHARACTER OF WASHINGTON, 197 

It was because he was, for the first time, a dreamer. His imagi- 
nation had never awakened before ; but now his fancies thronged 
I with dreams, wild as a youth's, vague as a poet's, and dazzling as 
'■ "fireflies tangled in a silver braid." 

I Thus before him in these Danubian solitudes once the battle 

I fields of nations, the Persian of the Immortal Guard had thought 

of some gazelle-eyed Lydian, seen once never to be forgot in the 

Temple of the Sun ; the wild Bulgarian had felt his savage eyes 

grow dim with tears of blood, when the Byzantine arrow pierced 

his breast, and he remembered some Greek captive loved, as tigers 

I love, to whose feet he would never bring again the pillage of the 

j palace and the trophies of the hunt ; the Roman legionary leaning 

on his spear on guard, while the cohorts slept in their black, 

frozen camp, had dreamed of a gold-haired barbarian, far away in 

the utmost limits of the Western isles, whom he loved under the 

green shadows of fresh Britannic woods as he had never loved 

where tawny Tiber rolled. 

Thus before him men had mused in those forsaken solitudes 
of the light of a woman's smile, of the softness of a woman's 
memory, where standing in the silence of the night, he heard the 
fall of the torrents thunder through the stillness and watched the 
black pines tower upward into the star-lighted gloom. Nations 
had perished on those shadowy battle plains, but the same river 
rolled unchanged; and unchanged the same dreams of passion 
dreamed themselves away. 



THE CHARACTER OF WASHINGTON. 

Zebulon B. Vance. 
The composition of man is threefold : physical, intellectual, and 
moral. It is the justly proportioned composition of these three 
that constitutes the real excellence of perfect manhood — that 
creature made a little lower than the angels, the noblest image 
of God. 



198 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

Perhaps no character in history can be pronounced truly great 
without this combination ; certainly not if the moral attributes 
be deficient. ■ 

All of the qualities which belong to the " noble family of truth," 
which engender love of country, and promote the good of mankind, , 
and the glory of God, are born and bred in the moral nature of : 
man, from which likewise spring the evil qualities which afflict 
and debase the world. That system of ethics, therefore, which , 
best succeeds in developing the excellences of our moral nature, 
is the one which most commends itself to our race. The noble 
characters which it produces are justly held up as living, practical . 
examples of the excellence of its principles. j 

Viewed with reference to these facts, George Washington may ; 
be justly considered one of the greatest men whom the world has 
produced. Greater soldiers, more intellectual statesmen, and pro- 
founder sages have doubtless existed in the history of the English 
race — perhaps in our own country — but not one who to great; 
excellence in each of these fields has added such exalted integrity, ; 
such unaffected piety, such unsullied purity of soul, and such 
wondrous control of his own spirit. He illustrated and adorned 
the civilization of Christianity, and furnished an example of the 
wisdom and perfection of its teachings which the subtlest argu- 
ments of its enemies cannot impeach. That one grand, rounded 
life, full-orbed with intellectual and moral glory, is worth, as 
the product of Christianity, more than all the dogmas of all the 
teachers. 

The youth of America who aspire to promote their own and 
their country's welfare, should never cease to gaze upon his great 
example, or to remember that the brightest gems in the crown of 
his immortality, the qualities which uphold his fame upon earth, 
and plead for him in heaven, were those which characterized him 
as the patient, courteous, brave. Christian gentleman. In this 
respect he was a blessing to the whole human race no less than to 
the many millions who celebrate the day of his birth. 



THE RESCUE, 199 



THE BESCUE. 



At half past seven on Saturday morning, May 16th, as the 
ikeeper of the Williamsburgh reservoir was in front of his dam, he 
igaw in the east branch a spurt of water near the base. In a mo- 
ment he turned toward his bam, jumped on his horse, and rode 
lor dear Ufe down the road to Williamsburg. So terrible was the 
fepeed he made, that in less than ten minutes he was among the 
cottages of Williamsburg, crying and yelling like a madman, 
f ' The dam ! The dam is burst ! Get up to the high ground ! 
[The water is coming ! " 

It had come. Those who were safe before the news came, 
jescaped. As for the rest, they took the chances of the flood. 
Some clung to their houses ; but houses were mere toys of paper, 
fewept like feathers here and there, piled one upon another, upset, 
kpun around, beaten, buffeted, and tossed about with all that was 
puman in them shaken into the terrible railway speed of the 
jieluge of timbers and rocks and waters. 

' Some fled, and were overwhelmed before the eyes of their 

riends. Some went mad, and rode the deluge down the valley, 

hrieking. Here and there one could be seen sitting on the roof 

f his shaking house, and clinging to it as the billows struck it. 

f these last, none had a more wonderful experience than a young 

nglishman of Leeds. 

When the alarm was first given, he was at his work in the 
jpool-room of the silk works. Kushing out of the mill, his first 
ihought was for his father, wife, and children. They had all left 
;he house. As he shouted to them to run for their lives, the wife 
md children obeyed ; but the father, an old man, thinking that 
5afety could better be found in the house, went back. With a 
aound his son was at his side, begging him to leave the doomed 
3uilding. But in an instant the floor gave way beneath their 
:eet, and the father disappeared from sight. Climbing out of the 
ivindow, the young man crawled up to the roof j ust as the build- 



200 



FRANKLIX SPEAKER. 



I 



ing broke up, leaving him with but a fragment to cling to f< 
his life. 

On, on he went, sailing down that awful flood, in full sight 
wife and children, who, as they looked on in agony and terroi 
expected momentarily to see him sink beneath the surging masi 
In a few seconds liis frail raft was crushed like an egg-shell ; but 
his presence of mind never left him. He jumped for another, a: 
when that was gone for yet another. 

Hastening down, down with the current at terrific speed, inten 
only on the fearful task he had in hand, he never once thought of 
the dams toward which he was hastening. The first one was 
reached in an awful crash and jam. He Avas hurled seemingljr 
twenty feet into the air, to come down and be submerged for the 
first time, far beneath the waves. He came to the surface again, 
and clasped another piece of drift-wood. It was then he realized 
with an intensity imaginable only by those whose lives have been 
likewise imperiled, that another and higher dam was but a shorl 
distance below, and that unless he escaped from the flood befoK 
that point was reached, there was absolutely no hope for life. 

Just at this instant the swollen mass of water and debris surge( 
toward the shore. Will it remain 1 AVill the broken roofs at hi: 
feet serve him as a bridge with which to reach firm earth again 
N^o, tliey are moving out toward the current. The last hold oi 
life seems breaking away. He hears the roar of the dam. Mon 
and more heart-rending grow the screams and groans of the womei 
and children, sweeping down toward liim in houses and fragment 
of houses. 

But just as he would yield himself in resignation to his terribl 
fate, comes a sudden turn in the debris — a quick surge of th 
gathering waters toAvard the shore. It is his last chance ! Bette 
die here than below ! He leaps ! The fragment on which he strike 
totters, gives way from under him, but not before he has made 
spring, which with another and another leapj brings him to th 
shore ! Saved as by a miracle ! 



THE RIDE OF COLLINS GRAVES. 201 



THE RIDE OF COLLINS GRAVES. 

John Boyle O'Reilly. 

Xo song of a soldier riding down 

To the raging fight from Winchester town ; 

No song of a time that shook the earth 

With the nation's throe at a nation's birth ; 

But the song of a brave man, free from fear 

As Sheridan's self or Paul Eevere ; 

Who risked what they risked, free from strife, 

And its promise of glorious pay — his life. 

The peaceful valley has waked and stirred, 
And the answering echoes of life are heard j 
The dew still clings to the trees and grass, 
And the early toilers smiling pass, 
As they glance aside at the white- walled homes. 
Or up the valley, Avhere merrily comes 
The brook that sparkles in diamond rills 
As the sun comes over the Hampshire hills. 

Wliat was it that passed like an ominous breath, 
Like a shiver of fear or a touch of death ? 
What was it ? The valley is peaceful still. 
And the leaves are afire on the top of the hill ; 
It was not a sound, nor a thing of sense, — 
But a pain, like the pang of the short suspense 
That wraps the being of those wdio see 
At their feet the gulf of Eternity ! 

The air of the valley has felt the chill ; 
The workers pause at the door of the mill ; 
The housewife, keen to the shivering air. 
Arrests her step on the cottage stair. 



202 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

Instinctive taught by the mother-love, 
And thinks of the sleeping ones above ! 

Why start the listeners ? \\'Tiy does the course 
Of the mill-stream widen 1 " Is it a horse ? 
Hark to the sounds of his hoofs," they say, 
"That gallops so wildly Williamsburg way !" 

Oh God ! what was that, like a human shriek 
From the winding valley ? Will nobody speak 1 
Will nobody answer those women who cry 
As the awful warnings thunder by ? 

Whence come they ? Listen ! And now they hear 

The sound of the galloping horse-hoofs near ; 

They watch the trend of the vale, and see 

The rider, who thunders so menacingly, 

With waving arms and warning scream 

To the home-filled banks of the valley stream. 

He h?aws no rein, but he shakes the street 

Wi jA a shout and the ring of the galloping feet. 

And this the cry that he flings to the wind : 

"^(9 the hills for your lives! The flood is behind!" 

He cries and is gone ; but they know the worst, — 

The treacherous Williamsburg dam has burst ! 

The basin that nourished their happy homes 

Is changed to a demon. — It comes ! it comes ! 

A monster in aspect, with shaggy front 

Of shattered dwellings, to take the brunt 

Of the dwellings they shatter, — white-maned and hoarse 

The merciless terror fills the course 

Of the narrow valley, and rushing raves. 

With Death on the first of its liissing waves, 



THE SEA. 203 



Till cottage and street and crowded mill 
Are crumbled and crushed. 



But onward still 
In front of the roaring flood is heard 
The galloping horse and the warning word. 
Thank God, that the brave man's life is spared ! 
From Williamsburg town he nobly dared 
To race with the flood and to take the road 
In front of the terrible swath it mowed. 
For miles it thundered and crashed behind, 
But he looked ahead with a steadfast mind ; 
'''■They must he learned V^ was all he said, 
As away on his terrible ride he sped. 



When heroes are called for, bring the crown 
To this Yankee rider ; send him down 
On the stream of time with Curtius old ; 
His deed as the Roman's was brave and bold. 
And the tale can as noble a thrill awake. 
For he offered his life for the people's sake. 



THE SEA. 

Charles Swain. 

We are surrounded every moment by the presence and bounty 
Df the sea. It looks out upon us from every violet in our garden- 
3ed, from every spire of grass that drops upon our passing feet the 
Deaded dew of the morning, from the bending grain that fills the 
jirm of the reaper, from the broad foreheads of our cattle and the 
posy faces of our children, and from the elm and spreading maple 
that weave their protecting branches beneath the sun and swing 
i heir shadows over our habitations. 

We make wealth for ourselves and our children out of its roU- 



204 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

ing waters, though we live a thousand leagues away from its shore, 
and never have looked on its crested beauty or listened to its 
eternal anthem. The sea is also set to purify the atmosphere. 
The winds, whose wings are heavy and whose breath is sick with 
the malaria of the lands over which they have blown, are sent out 
to range over these mighty pastures of the deep, to plunge and 
play with its rolling billows, and dip their pinions over and ovei 
in its healing waters. | 

There they rest when they are weary, cradled into sleep on that 
vast swinging crest of the ocean. There they rouse themselves 
when they are refreshed, and lifting its waves upon their shoul- 
ders, they dash it into spray, and hurl it backwards and forwards 
through a thousand leagues of sky. 

Thus their whole substance is drenched and bathed and washed 
and winnowed and sifted through and through by this glorious bap- 
tism. Thus they fill their mighty lungs once more with the sweel 
breath of ocean, and striking their wings for tlie shore, they gc 
breathing health and vigor along all the fainting hosts that wait f oi 
them on mountain and forest and valley and plain, till the whole 
drooping continent lifts up its rejoicing face and mingles its 
laughter with the sea that has waked it from its fevered sleep, and 
poured its tides of returning life through all its shriveled arteries. 

The ocean is not the idle creature that it seems, with its vasi 
and lazy bulk sleeping along the shore or tumbling in aimless 
fury from pole to pole. It is a mighty giant who, leaving his 
oozy bed, comes up upon the land to spend his strength in the 
service of man. . \\ ii 

It is the sea that lays the iron track, that builds the iron horse 
that fills his nostrils with fiery breath, and sends his tireless hoofr 
thundering across the longitudes. It is the power of the sea that 
is doing for man all those mightiest works that would be else im- 
possible. It is by this power that he is to level the mountains, tc 
subdue the continents, to throw his pathways round the globe, and 
make his nearest approaches to omnipresence and omnipotence. 



MEXICO AND THE UNITED STATES. 205 



MEXICO AND THE UNITED STATES. 

Horace Bushnell. 

It was not a peaceful band of emigrants or exiles who landed 
Jiin Mexico to find a refuge and a place to worship God according 
11 to their own consciences. It was not Saxon blood or the "British 
laiiind, filled with the determinate principles and lofty images of 
! freedom enshrined in the English tongue. They came in the 

J|name of a proud empire armed for conquest and extirpation. The 

is «j infernal tragedy of Guatemozin was the inaugural scene of Mexi- 

j can justice. They loaded themselves Avith gold and silver ; they 

i rioted in spoil ; founded nothing ; cherished no hope of liberty ; 
practiced no kind of industry but extortion ; erected no safeguards 

1' of morality. 

What is the result ? Worthless or having no personal value in 

J| themselves, there has grown out of them, what alone could grow, 
a nation of thriftless anarchists and intriguers, without money at 
the very mouth of their mines, without character abroad or govern- 
ment at home, and with nothing to hope for in the future better 
than they have suffered in the past. How striking an example to 
show, that neither a fruitful country nor floods of gold and silver 
can make a nation great without greatness in the breasts of her 
sons. 

Eevert now to the simple beginning of our founders. They 
brought hither in their little ships not money, not merchandise, 
no array of armed forces, but they came freighted with religion, 
learning, law, and the spirit of men. 

They stepped forth upon the shore, and a wild and frowning 
wilderness received them. Strong in God and their heroic patience, 
they began their combat with danger and hardship. Disease 
smote them, but they fainted not ; famine, but they feasted on 
roots with a patient spirit. They built a house for God — then for 
themselves. They established education and the observance of a 

I stern but august morality ; then legislated for the smaller purposes 



206 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

of wealth and convenience. They gave their sons to God ; through j- 
Him to virtue ; and through virtue to the state. 

So they laid the foundations. Soon the villages began to smile ; 
churches arose still farther in the depths of the wilderness ; indus- 
try multiplied her hands ; colleges were established, the beginnings 
of the civil order completed themselves and swelled into the 
majesty of states ; and now behold the germ of the mighty nation 
manifest, a nation of law and industry and power, rushing on a 
career of expansion never equaled in the history of man. 

What addition, we are now tempted to ask, could any amount 
of wealth have made to the real force and value of these begin- 
nings ? Or having a treasure in her sons, what is there besides, 
whether strength, growth, riches, of which a state can possibly - 
fail ? Wealth is but the shadow of men ; and " lordship and 
victory," it has been nobly said, "are but the pages of justice 
and virtue." 



THE BATTLE OF LUTZEN. 

Harper's Magazxite. 

The battle of Liitzen was one of the most memorable in the 
history of Europe, for it was a conflict of opinions. It Avas the 
protest of the rising liberties of the North against that dull dream 
of rigid repression that sprung from the diseased brains of despotic 
rulers, and with which they hoped to enchain once more the 
mighty intellect of Germany, If Wallenstein should conquer, 
the world must linger for many a century under the gloom of 
physical and mental slavery ; the free schools of Saxony and 
Prussia would have been closed ; the press of Germany and per- 
haps of Holland might have been silenced ; the freemen of England 
would have wanted the example of German progress ; and the 
freemen of America might never have been born. Liitzen, there- 
fore, was the battle of the people ; the struggle of labor against 



ELECTORAL REFORM IN ENGLAND. 207 



indolence ; of intellect against medieval violence ; — an earlier 

Blinker Hill. 

In the two centuries and more which have passed since this 
i memorable battle, the struggle between the North and the South 
i has never perfectly ceased. Dissension and delay laid Austria 
I and Prussia at the feet of the first Napoleon. Upon the dissen- 
] sion of the Germans the third iSTapoleon counted when he sum- 
! moned his legions to a foray over the Rhine. But the fruits of 
I Liitzen seem at last to be reaped. Gustavus did not die in vain. 
j Man to man and heart to heart, the Germans stand before their 

I beautiful river in united and fraternal ranks. 

I 

■ They fight for freedom beneath the walls of Paris. The plot- 
ting of no Italian craft can divide them now ; the cunning policy 

' of the man of destiny has failed. Munich rejoices in the triumph, 
of Magdeburg ; and all Germany exults in the consciousness of a 
common safety. The plains of Leipsic, — twice hallowed as the 
battle ground between medieval tyranny and German freedom, 
between men of destiny and men of thought — repose once more in 
fertile peace. The clang of war sounds afar off; the battles of 
Germany are fought on foreign soil. 



ELECTORAL REFORM IN ENGLAND. 

George W. Curtis. 

This century opened in England upon a condition of the elec- 
toral systeni which, for a government professing to represent 
the people, was absurd, if it had not been alarming. In 1740, 
the city of London, with a population of five hundred thousand, 
had only four representatives ; while the county of Cornwall, with. 
less than two hundred thousand, had forty-four. In the same 
year, three hundred and seventy-five voters, distributed among 
thirty boroughs, sent sixty members to parliament — a little more 
I than six votes to a member. 



208 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

The most famous of these constituencies was the borough of 
Old Sarum. In 1780, Burke said of it : " You can only trace the 
streets by the color of the corn ; and its sole manufacture is in 
members of Parliament." At the beginning of the century, this 
wilderness was represented by two members who were nominated 
by the steward or baker of the proprietor. 

There was another borough which, in the lapse of time, had 
been entirely submerged in the sea ; and like some of our earlier 
western cities, existed only under Avater. But its liberties refused 
to be drowned ; and on election day, the proprietor of the sea-shore 
with three companions stepped into a boat, and the election took 
place at sea. 

Still better was the electoral district with one voter only. At 
the proper time, this bold Briton took the chair, called himself to 
order, nominated himself, seconded the nomination, put the ques- 
tion, elected himself unanimously, and adjourned — sine die. And 
while this independent and enterprising elector Avas representing 
himself in Parliament, the great cities of Leeds, Birmingham, and 
Manchester had no representation whatever. 

"Enlarge the suffrage!" cried Lord Eldon; "why, the aris- 
tocracy are the natural guardians 'of the lower classes.'" "Thank 
your Lordship," replied the English people, " but we have come 
of age, and will spare the aristocracy the trouble." 

"Property ought to govern the country," insisted the fogies. 
"Very well," replied the reformers. "The annual income of 
English working-men in wages is nearly three hundred million 
pounds, and their property in clothes, furniture, tools, and deposits 
is five hundred millions. Let property govern ; but remember 
that a farthing is as dear to the laborer as a thousand guineas are 
to the lord." 

It is as true in America as in England ; whoever owns himself 
and the wages of his lawful industry is a property-holder, and is 
entitled to every protection of this property which any other man 
enjoys. If 1 have a natural right to use my hands, I have a 



DANGERS TO AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS, 209 

natural right to every thing which secures to me that use. So, if 
I have a natural right to liberty, I have an equal natural right to 
all the defences of liberty. 

But no man is born a voter, shout the objectors. Very true ; 
so no man is born a man, if you come to that ; he is born a baby ; 
but he is bom with the right of becoming a man without hin- 
drance ; and if no man is born a voter, yet every man is born 
with equal right to become a voter upon equal terms with other 
men. 

"The vote is the only security for the possession of property," 
said Lord Somers, in the English House of Commons, two centu- 
ries ago ; and to-day, dynasties are crumbling, and thrones trem- 
bling, and oppression vanisliing, because the age is beginning to 
believe that Lord Somers spoke the truth. 



DANGERS TO AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS. 

Elihu Root. 

The darkest hours and severest trials of American democracy 
are yet to come. Material prosperity is no index of the stability 
of governmental institutions. Xeither is popular unanimity, for- 
titude, and patriotism in war. Such patriotism is instinctive 
patriotism, not the reflective patriotism resulting from political 
education. War is the resort of weak governments. Any govern- 
ment can live on the instinct of self-preservation when national 
life is threatened by external enemies. It is not war, but peace 
which tries institutions. 

Between the lines of the record of American progress, we can 
read of social, administrative, and spiritual changes which compli- 
cate the problem of self-government, and increase its difficulty. 

Our equality of condition has commenced to disappear. Already 
there is forming upon the one hand a class of very rich, and upon 
the other a class of very poor. Every factory that is built, every 



210 FRANKLIN SPEAKER, 

new industry that is inaugurated, every mine that is dug, every 
city that is gathered, means a few men who have all that life can 
give and many men who have nothing that makes life worth living. 

Consider the influence of great corporations; how they are 
represented in Congress and State legislatures ; how they control 
and corrupt legislatures ; how they sometimes mold and some- 
times defy the law ; how they stifle investigation ; how they per- 
vert public franchises ; how grasping and unjust they are. Con- 
sider, on the other hand, the condition of the poor ; the paupers 
and laborers in the cities, the workmen in manufactories and 
mines. Of what advantage is this wealth to them 1 Why should 
they desire to perpetuate it ? They do not desire to perpetuate it, 
but to destroy it. What mean these armies of tramps that over- 
run the land ? these Fall River strikes and Pittsburgh riots and 
''granger" laws and new California constitutions? They mean 
the war of poverty upon wealth. 

One of the safeguards of free institutions is that every citizen 
has the opportunity to rise. Here is a class with no opportunity 
to rise. The greatest perceivable injustice for them is that other 
men are rich while they are poor. The whole order of things 
oppresses them, and they follow the leader who cries out against 
it, by the instinct of self-preservation. In Russia, they are nihil- 
ists ; in Germany, socialists ; in France, communists. 

Here is the appalling struggle for which democracy has now to 
prepare herself. She extends sufi^rage to the toiling, sufi'ering 
mass of mankind in order that they may be free. How can they 
be prevented from using suff'rage to destroy freedom and enthrone 
in its place enforced equality 1 How can we prevent the same 
result which was reached in Italy when Rome accepted a new 
lease of empire at the hand of a beneficent Csesar ; in England, 
when the Anglo-Normans passed from the constitutional govern- 
ment of the House of Lancaster under the absolute monarchy of 
the Tudors ; in France, when the peasant proprietors accepted a 
paternal government and the Empire which was peace ? 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 211 

WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

No. 1. 

George W. Curtis. 

As Demosthenes was the orator of Greece against Philip, and 
Cicero of Rome against Catiline, and John Pym of England 
against the Stuart despotism, Wendell Phillips was distinctively 
the orator, as others were the statesmen, of the anti-slavery cause. 

The tremendous controversy, indeed, inspired universal elo- 
quence. But ever supreme over it all was the eloquence of Phil- 
lips, as over the harmonious tumult of a vast orchestra, one clear 
voice, like a lark high poised in heaven, steadily carries the 
melody. 

When he first spoke at Faneuil Hall, some of the most renowned 
American orators were still in their prime. Webster and Clay 
were in the Senate, Choate at the bar, Edward Everett upon the 
Academic platform. From all these orators Phillips differed more 
than they differed from each other. They spoke accepted views. 
They moved with masses of men, and were sure of the applause 
of party spirit, of political tradition, and of established institutions. 
Phillips stood alone. 

Public opinion condemned him. He must win public opinion 
to achieve his purpose. The tone, the method of the new orator, 
announced a new spirit. It was not a heroic story of the last 
century, nor the contention of contemporary politics ; it was the 
unsuspected heroism of a mightier controversy that breathed and 
burned in his words. 

He faced his audience with a tranquil mien and a beaming 
aspect that was never dimmed. He spoke, and in the measured 
cadence of his quiet voice there was intense feeling, but no decla- 
mation, no passionate appeal, no superficial and feigned emotion. 
It was simple colloquy — a gentleman conversing. Unconsciously 
and surely the ear and heart were charmed. 

How was it done ? — Ah ! how did Mozart do it, how Raphael 1 



212 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

The secret of the rose's sweetness, of the bird's ecstasy, of the sun- 
set's glory — that is the secret of genius and of eloquence, "What 
was heard, what was seen, was the form of noble manhood, the 
courteous and self-possessed tone, the flow of modulated speech, 
sparkling with matchless ricliness of illustration, with apt allusion, 
and happy anecdote and historic pai-allel, with wit and pitiless 
invective, with melodious ])athos, with stinging satire, Avith crack- 
ling epigram and limpid humor, like the bright ripples that play 
around the sure and steady prow of the resistless ship. 

Like an illuminated vase of odors, he glowed with concentrated 
and perfumed fire. The divine energy of his conviction utterly 
possessed him, and his 

" Pure and eloquent blood 
Spoke in Ms cheek, and so distinctly -wrought, 
That one migbt almost say his body thought. " 

Was it Pericles swaj^ing the Athenian multitude ? "Was it ApoUo 
breathing the music of the morning from his lips ? It was an 
American patriot, a modern son of liberty, with a soul as firm and 
as true as was ever consecrated to unselfish duty, pleading with 
the American conscience for the chained and speechless victims 
of American inhumanity. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

No. 2. 



George W. CrRxis. 

For his great work of arousing the country and piercing the 
national conscience, Phillips was especially fitted, not only, by the 
commanding will and genius of the orator, but by the profound 
sincerity of his faith in the people. The party leaders of his time 
had a qualified faith in the people. His was unqualified. 

But while he cherished this profound faith, and because he 
cherished it, he never flattered the mob, nor hung upon its neck. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS. 213 

nor pandered to its passion, nor siifFered its foaming hate or its 
exulting enthusiasm, to touch the calm poise of his regnant soul. 

He moved in solitary majesty, and if from his smooth speech 
a lightning flash of satire or of scorn struck a cherished lie or an 
honored character or a dogma of the party creed, and the crowd 
burst into a furious tempest of dissent, he beat it into silence with 
.uncompromising iteration. If it tried to drown his voice, he 
turned to the reporters, and over the raging tumult calmly said, 
" Howl on, I speak to thirty millions here." 

To many of his fellow-citizens his faith seemed mad, quixotic, 
whimsical, or merely feigned. To some of them even now he 
appears to have been only an eloquent demagogue. But his life 
is the reply. To no act of his, to no private advantage sought or 
gained, to no use of his masterly power, except to promote pur- 
poses which he believed to be essential to the public welfare, 
could they ever point who charged him Avith base motives or per- 
sonal ends. 

As we recall the story of that life, the spectacle of to-day is one 
of the most significant in our history. This memorial rite is not 
a tribute to official service, to literary genius, to scientific distinc- 
tion ; it is homage to personal character. It is the solemn public 
declaration that a life of transcendent purity of purpose, blended 
with commanding powers, devoted with absolute unselfishness, 
and with amazing results, to the welfare of the country and 
of humanity, is, in the American republic, an example so inspiring, 
a patriotism so lofty, and a public service so beneficent, that, in 
contemplating them, discordant opinions, differing judgments, and 
the sharp sting of controversial speech, vanish like frost in a flood 
of sunshine. 

]^o man, indeed, can take a chief part in tumultuous national 
controversy without encountering misjudgment and reproach and 
unmeasured condemnation. I am not here to declare that the 
judgment of Wendell Phillips was always sound, nor his estimate 
of men always just, nor his policy always approved by the event. 



214 FRANKLIX SPEAKER. 

He would have scorned such praise. I am not here to eulogize 
the mortal, but the immortal. He was a great American patriot ; 
and no American life — no, not one — offers to future generations 
of his countrymen a more priceless example of inflexible fidelity 
to conscience and to public duty ; and no American more truly 
than he purged the national name of its shame, and made the 
American flag the flag of hope for mankind. 



DEFENSE OP GENERA Ti FITZ-JOHN POBTEB. 

When a soldier's honor is impeached, when his loyalty is 
assailed, when cowardice is even insinuated against him, it cannot 
be expected that he is to be restrained by the ordinary intercourse 
between gentlemen. If his past life gives the lie to the charge, 
if it speaks a nature that would revolt even at the thought of 
crime, if it evinces a long and perilous course of duty and an 
ardent and ever enduring love of country, a constant zeal for the 
honor of its flag and an undying devotion to its service, — if all 
these are true of myself, then I may be well excused for proudly 
invokiug them, as an ansxfer to the false and groundless imputa- 
tion upon my duty and my honor, as a citizen and a soldier. 

Traitor to my country I TVhen did treason so endeavor to 
maintain the authority of the Government ? Traitor to my coun- 
try ! ^Vlien did treason so labor and i)eril life to rescue it from 
destruction ? Traitor to my country ! Indiff'erent to the honor 
of its flag ] gratifying a supposed personal dislike, regardless of 
the safety and reputation of the men intrusted to my command 
and who had followed me with ever increased confidence tiirough 
a terrific ordeal, through the fire of battles unparalleled in fierce- 
ness, fury, and mortality ! If the charge had not assumed the 
solemn form that has been given to it, it would be received every- 
where, where my whole conduct is known, as ludicrous, false, or 
the creation of a morbid and distempered brain. 



ONLY TWELVE LEFT, 215 

Without assuming to myself a purer patriotism than animates 
; other soldiers of the Union, I say fearlessly that none, no, not 

one, loves our Union with a stronger, holier love than I do. 

There is nothing in the future, as there has been nothing in 

the past, that I could not and would not gladly do, to achieve the 
I victory over its enemies and to bind up all the wounds under 

which it now bleeds. 

j Life ! What is it to the soldier who is false to his country and 
j his flag % Life ! w^hat Avill be its value to the soldier, with a flag 
I dishonored and a country lost % Who would wish to survive to 
I see the flag of his country trailed in the dust, its reputation 
i and its honor broken, the people separated into fragments, their 
1 fraternal affections converted into bitter hate, and the cause of 
i constitutional liberty itself, for ages, if not forever, extinguished % 
As far as one arm and the aspirations of one heart may be 

exerted to avert so dire a calamity, mine will be used to the last 

moment of my life. 



ONiiY t"w:elve left. 

C. Gates. 
[Of the pensioners of the American Revolution but twelve, remained in 1864.] 

Only twelve left ! — twelve worn and weary men. 
With the soft spray of age upon their locks 
In white remembrance of the storm-time when 
To Freedom's haven they were outer rocks. 

Only twelve left ! How short has grown the roll ! 
A nation calls it with suspended breath. 
Lest from its hand shoidd pass the sacred scroll 
To the last calling of the voice of death. 

Only twelve left I The ranks are thin, and wide 
Apart in the dim armies of the past ; 
Faint and afar they stand, who side by side 
Their steel-clamped columns on the foeman cast. 



216 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

Only twelve left ! In the still camps of death 
The comrades of their toils and triumphs lie ; 
And marble sentries guard with noiseless breath 
Their green encampments of eternity. 

Only twelve left ! With slow and feeble tread 
Yet for a little time their march they keep, 
From the far fading fields of doubt and dread 
To the near fortresses of rest and sleep. 

Only twelve left ! The sacred leaves to turn 
Back to the records of unvalued worth, 
And fix young Freedom's lineage at the urn 
Of his red baptism, who b.eheld his birth. 

Only twelve left ! The golden-fruited years 
Have dropped unheeded bounty on the sod. 
While a proud nation's feet 'mid Avrongs and tears 
Have turned to paths these heroes never trod. 



THE MIIiLENNIUM NOT YET. 

J. H. Friswell. 

In the political world — that great world whose newspaper is 
history, and whose years are cycles — there is an ebb and flow in 
the tide of events. They flow rapidly enough at first, and then 
they cease and rest. The thousand years of peace Avhich the 
saints are to enjoy before the other dead arise, seemed to some 
ardent souls to have commenced in 1851, when the brotherhood 
of nations and the federation of the Avorld had set in. 

The war drum was to throb no longer ; there were some millions 
of swords ready to be beaten up into ploughshares, and as many 
guns to be made into steam-engines and cylindrical boilers. But 
1852 taught man that when he thought he had tamed his heart 



WAR. 217 

he counted without his host. There is much to be done yet 
before we reach Dr. Cumming's Millennial rest. The nations 
iare full of unquiet spirits who are too ready to appeal to force, 
jand who, when people talk of peace, make them ready for war. 
j If you are on the right side of duty, perhaps it is as well to 
Ibe shot out of life, as to be cheated out of it. Perhaps in the 
sight of God, a foetid court in London or Liverpool, where Yice 
lalways shoulders Poverty, and Death hob-a-nobs cheek by jowl 
with the two, is as sore an evil as is a battle field where men blow 
each other to bits, and deface God's image by the thousand. 

War is not an unmitigated evil, although it is no doubt a very 
sore one. But life itself is a war ; and the most eloquent of the 
'lapostles has taken up the whole armor, and told us, indeed, to be 
jsoldiers, having the shield of faith, the breastplate of righteous- 
aiess, and the sword of the Spirit. 



WAR. 

Robert Bulwer Lytton. 

You 
Whom this song cannot reach with its transient breath, 
Deaf ears that are stopped with the brown dust of death. 
Blind eyes that are dark to your own deathless glory. 
Silenced hearts that are heedless to praise murmured o'er ye. 
Sleep deep ! Sleep in peace ! Sleep in memory ever, 
Wrapt each soul in the deeds of its deathless endeavor ; 
Till the great final peace shall be struck thro' the world, 
Till the stars be recalled and the firmament furled 
In the dawn of a daylight undying ; until 
The signal of Zion be seen on the Hill 
Of the Lord ; when the day of the battle is done, 
And the conflict with Time by Eternity won. 
Till then while the ages roll onward, thro' war, 
Toil, and strife, must roll with them this turbulent star; 



218 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

And man can no more exclude war than he can 
Exclude sorrow ; for both are conditions of man 
And agents of God. Truth's supreme revelations 
Come in sorrow to men, and in war come to nations. 
Then blow, blow the clarion, and let the war roll. 
And strike steel upon steel, and strike soul upon soul, 
If, in striking, we kindle keen flashes and bright 
From the manhood in man, stricken thus into light. 



APPEAL TO THE GEORGIA CONVENTION OF 1860 | 
AGAINST SECESSION. 

Alexander H. Stephens. 

When we and our posterity shall see our lovely South deso- 
lated by all the demons of war which this act of yours will inev- 
itably invite, when our green fields of waving harvests shall be 
trodden down by the murderous soldiery, our temples of justice 
in ashes, all the horrors of war upon us, who but this convention^ 
will be held responsible for it ? and who but him who shall give 
his vote for this unwise and ill-timed measure shall be held tc 
strict account for this suicidal act by the present generation, and 
probably by posterity ? 

Pause, I entreat you, and consider for a moment what reasons yor 
can give to your fellow-sufferers in the calamity that it will brinr 
upon us. What reasons can you give to the nations of the eartV 
to justify it ? They will be the calm and dehberate judges in thi^ 
case ; and to what cause or one overt act can you point on whicl: 
to rest the plea of justification ? What right has the jSTortl 
assailed % What interest of the South has been invaded ? AVliai 
justice has been denied ? and what claim founded upon justice, 
and right has been withheld ? Can you to-day name one govern 
mental act of wrong deliberately and purposely done by the 
government at Washington of which the South has a right t(v 
complain ? 



PERICLES TO THE PEOPLE. 219 

I 
I 
I I challenge the answer. Leaving out of view, for the present, 

the countless millions of dollars you must expend in a war with 

the North, there will be thousands and tens of thousands of your 

sons and brothers slain in battle and offered up as sacrifices upon 

the altar of ambition — and for what, I ask again ? Is it for the 

overthrow of the American government established by our com- 

nion ancestry, cemented and built up by their sweat and blood, 

knd founded upon the broad principles of right, justice, and 

|iumanity ? 

I I declare here as I have often done before, and as has been 

Repeated by the greatest and wisest statesmen of this or any other 

Jand, that it is the best and truest government, the most equal 

iin its rights, the most just in its decisions, the most lenient in its 

■'control, the most inspiring in its measures to elevate the race of 

"man that the sun in heaven ever shone upon. 

1 Kow, for you to attempt to overthrow such a government as 

this under which we have lived for more than three-quarters of a 

''century, in which we have gained our standing as a nation and 

lour domestic safety, while the elements of peril are around us, 

Wvith peace, tranquillity, and rights unassailed and accompanied 

with unbounded prosperity — is the height of madness, folly, and 

wickedness, to which I can lend neither my sanction nor my vote. 



PERICLES TO THE PEOPIiE. 

Elijah Kellogg. 

Imagine yourself at Athens, among that strange people of 
feverish blood, who deify to-day the man they slaughtered yester- 
day. The voice of the herald proclaims that Pericles is to be 
arraigned before the tribunal of the people. Borne along by the 
crowd, you enter the hall of justice. Xot a sword rattles in its 
scabbard ; not a mailed foot rings on the marble floor ; one deep, 
intense, ominous silence pervades the dangerous assembly, as 
! Pericles, rising, thus addresses them : — 



220 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

" Ye men of Athens, I come not here to plead for life, though 
it be spent in exile ; to entreat for a breath, though it be drawn 
in the damps of a dungeon ; but to refute a vile slander. Cratinus 
accuses me of having embezzled the money raised for the defence 
of Greece, and of having expended it in adorning the city of 
Athens, as a proud and vain woman decketh herself with jewels. 

" Have I not defended Greece while Sparta and the allies Avere 
reposing in comfort by their own firesides 1 He accuses me of 
sacrificing the lives of brave men to my vaulting ambition, and 
even affects to shed tears over those who fell, in the floAver of their 
youth, at Samos. f 

" Sacrificing ! Were they machines to jnove at my bidding ? 
bullocks to be dragged up and offered at the altar of Mars 1 
Were they Persian mercenaries, to be driven with whips to the 
conflict 1 or were they patriots defending their firesides, and I 
their elder brother 1 They were the descendants of those who fell 
at Marathon, — men whose youthful locks had been worn off by 
the helmet, and whose fingers grew to the sword-hilt. 

" One day, as we were making forced marches across the isth- 
mus in pursuit of the Lacedaemonians, a woman, following the 
camp as a sutler, with a child at her breast, fell and expired from 
fatigue. A soldier raised his spear to dispatch the infant. Moved 
with compassion, I struck down his weapon, for I thought of my 
own little ones at home, whose kisses were scarcely yet cold on 
my lips, and, even in the confusion of pursuit, provided him with '^ 
a nurse. 

" On my return, he accompanied me, grew up with my children, 
fed at my table, slept in my tent, and fought behind my shield. 
As a reward for life, education, and a thousand anxious cares 
incurred, he has now, by false accusation, summoned me to the 
tribunal of my country, to plead for that life which has ever been 
held cheap in her service. What shall be done with such a 
wretch 1 I hear you exclaim, — ' Send for the executioner ! Burn 
him to ashes ! Fling him from the Acropolis ! ' 



WHERE SHOULD THE SCHOLAR LIVE? 221 



" Thou small thing, I will not hurt thee ; for, in the proud con- 
sciousness of right, I could even pity thee. -^Vnd, when again 
I thou liest among the slain at Megara, thy helmet cleft, the lance 
i of the enemy at thy throat, and thou with not strength enough to 
; parry it, then call for Pericles, and he will again come to thy 
j rescue." 

I WHERE SHOULD THE SCHOLAR LIVE? 

H. W. Longfellow. 

Where should the scholar live 1 In solitude or in society 1 
In the green stillness of the country, where he can hear the heart 
of Nature beat, or in the dark, gray town, where he can hear and 
feel the throbbing heart of man ? I will make answer for him, 
and say, in the dark, gray town. 0, they do greatly err who think 
that the stars are all the poetry which cities have ; and therefore 
that the poet's only dwelling should be in sylvan solitudes, under 
the green roof of trees. 

Beautiful, no doubt, are all the forms of Nature, when trans- 
figured by the miracidous power of poetry ; hamlets and harvest- 
fields, and nut-brown waters, flowing ever under the forest, vast 
and shadowy, with aU the sights and sounds of rural life. But 
after all, what are these but the decorations and painted scenery 
in the great theater of human life ? What are they but the coarse 
materials of the poet's song 1 Glorious, indeed, is the world of 
God around us, but more glorious the world of God within us. 
There lies the Land of Song ; there lies the poet's native land. 

The river of life, that flows through streets tumultuous, bearing 
along so many gallant hearts, so many ^ATcecks of humanity ; — the 
many homes and households, each a little world in itself, revolving 
round its fireside, as a central sun ; all forms of human joy and 
suffering, brought into that narrow compass ; — and to be in this, 
and be a part of this ; acting, thinking, rejoicing, sorrowing, with 
his fellow-men ; — such, such should be the poet's life. If he would 
describe the world, he should live in the world. 



222 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

The mind of the scholar, if you would have it large and liberal, 
should come in contact with other minds. It is better that his 
armor should be somewhat bruised by rude encounters even, than 
hang forever rusting on the wall. Nor will his themes be few or 
trivial, because apparently shut in between the walls of houses, 
and having merely the decorations of street scenery. A ruined 
character is as picturesque as a ruined castle. 

There are dark abysses and yawning gulfs in the human heart, 
which can be rendered passable only by bridging them over with 
iron nerves and sinews, as Challey bridged the Sarine in Switzer- 
land, and Telford the sea between Anglesea and England, with 
chain bridges. These are the great themes of human thought ; 
not green grass, and flowers, and moonlight. Besides, the mere 
external forms of nature we make our o^vn, and carry with us 
everywhere, by the power of memory. 



TIDINGS OF THE ATLANTIC. 

J. B. GOUGH. 

I WAS in New York when the question was often asked, " Any 
news of the Atlantic ?" And the answer day after day was, "No !" 
She had been due ten, fifteen, eighteen days, and still no news. 
Telegraphic despatches came from all quarters, " Any news of the 
Atlantic?" And the answer thrilled back again, sinking do^vn 
deep into the hearts of those who had friends on board, " No ! " 

Twenty days, twenty-one days, twenty-two days pasfsed, and I 
people began to be excited. 

Guns booming told that a ship was coming up the Narrows. 
People went out upon the battery, on the Castle gardens, and on 
the tops of houses to see and hear. It was an English ship, the 
" Union Jack " was flying. They watched the ship till she came 
to her moorings, and their hearts sunk within them. They sent 
hastily across, "Any news of the Atlantic?" And the answer 



THE PETRIFIED FERN. 223 



"No !" echoed through the air, filling many a heart with anguish. 
I " She sailed fifteen days before we did, and we have heard nothing 
'! of her." 

! Then old men shook their heads and said, " She is gone after 
I the 'President.'" Twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven days 
I passed, and those who had friends on board began to make up 
I their mourning. Twenty-nine, thirty days passed, and the cap- 
I tain's wife was so ill, that the doctors said she must die if her 
I suspense were not removed. 

One bright, beautiful morning, guns were heard, and a ship was 
j seen coming up the Narrows. A crowd was again collected, such 
I as had never turned out since the city was founded. It was a 
I British ship, for her flag was floating in the breeze. How men's 
i hearts beat as they watched the ship till she came to her moorings. 
The last hope seemed dying out, till at last, the noble ship steamed 
I • up the river. Every eye was fixed upon her. People gathered 
I around her like clusters of bees. Then an officer jumped upon 
I the paddle-box, and putting a trumpet to his mouth, called out, 
I " The Atlantic is safe!" 

I How the people shouted ! It was a shout from a hundred 
thousand throats. Men shook hands who never saw one another 
before. Men dashed away tears from cheeks that had been unused 
to such moisture. Bands of music paraded the streets ; trans- 
parencies were put in front of the hotels, " The Atlantic is safe !" 
Telegraphic wires worked all night thrilling the message, " The 
Atlantic is safe ! " Thousands apon thousands rejoiced, though 
\ not one in a hundred thousand had an acquaintance on board. 



THE PETRIFIED FERN. 

Mrs. M. B. Branch. 

In a valley, centuries ago, 

Grew a little fern-leaf, green and slender, 

Yeining delicate and fibers tender ; 
Waving when the wind crept down so low ; 



224 FRANKLIN SPEAKER, 

Rushes tall and moss and grass grew round it, 
Playful sunbeams darted in, and found it, 
Drops of dew stole in by night, and cro^vned it, 
But no foot of man e'er trod that way. 
Earth was young and keeping holiday. 

Monster fishes swam the silent main, 

Stately forests waved their giant branches, 
Mountains hurled their snowy avalanches, 

Mammoth creatures stalked across the plain ; 
Nature reveled in grand mysteries ; 
But the little fern Avas not of these, 
Did not number with the hills and trees. 
Only grew and waved its wild, sweet way, 
ISTo one came to note it day by day. 

Earth, one time, put on a frolic mood. 

Heaved the rocks, and changed the mighty motion 
Of the deep, strong currents of the ocean ; 

Moved the plam, and shook the haughty wood. 
Crushed the little fern in soft, moist clay. 
Covered it, and hid it safe away. 
Oh, the long, long centuries since that day ! 
Oh, the agony, oh, life's bitter cost, 
Since that useless little fern was lost ! 

Useless ! Lost ! There came a thoughtful man 
Searching Xature's secrets far and deep ; 
From a fissure in a rocky steep 

He withdrew a stone, o'er which there ran. 
Fairy pencilings, a quaint design, 
Veinings, leafage, fibers clear and fine. 
And the fern's life lay in every line ! 
So, I think, God hides some souls away, 
Sweetly to surprise us the last day. 



f 



THE LAST DAY OF POMPEII. 225 



THE LAST DAY OP POMPEII. 

Edward Bulwer Lytton. 

The morning had dawned on Campania. The air was uncom- 
monly cahn and sultry, and a thin, dull mist was gathering o'er 
field and valley. Clear above the low mist ros© the statue-crowned 
portals of the forum and the time-worn towers and red tiled 
roofs of the city. The cloud that had rested so long above 
Vesuvius had suddenly vanished, and its rugged and haughty 
brow looked without a frown on the scene below. 

Despite the earliness of the hour, the streets were crowded with 
the citizens and with strangers from the popidous neighborhood 
of Pompeii. Xoisily, swiftly, confusedly swept the many streams 
of life toward the great amphitheater. Although immense, it was 
soon filled to overflowing. Tier upon tier of living faces rose, all 
turned in cruel expectancy upon the arena. The deep blue Cam- 
panian sky smiled above them. Music gave forth its sweet strains, 
and the famished lion in his cage roared a sweeter melody to the 
pitiless ears of the Pompeiian populace. 

Murmurings at the delay were heard, when the Praetor cried : 
" Bring forth the murderer Glaucus for the lion ! " In an instant 
the vast crowd ceased swaying, and Glaucus came forth. The 
gaze of the thousands rested for a moment on the young form and 
haughty features of the Greek, then with a con\nilsive shudder 
on the grated den of the lion. While they were sighing, half in 
commiseration and half in horror, the beast leaped forth with a 
glad roar of release. The Greek stood firm and collected, dagger 
in hand, awaiting the spring of his savage foe. 

It was a moment of supreme, of horrible, breathless suspense. 
To the astonishment of all, at the first instant of its release, the 
lion halted abruptly in the arena, raised itself, and sniffed the air 
with impatient howls. Suddenly it sprang forward, but not on 
the Greek. It circled round and round the space as if looking 
for an avenue of escape. At last, as if tired of attempting tf" 



226 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

escape, it crept with a moan into its den, and lay do^vn to 
rest. 

Astonishment was depicted on every countenance. The crowd 
swayed to and fro with wonder. Then the cry, " A miracle ! a 
miracle ! " rolled up the living tiers, and was lost in the blue arch 
above them. The Greek stood tranquil in the midst of the sway- 
ing tumult, while over his noble features came an expression of 
unutterable solemnity. Pointing upward he cried : " Behold ! how 
the hands of the gods protect the guiltless ! " 

The crowd, instinctively gazing upward, saw an arm of flame 
and smoke reaching out of Vesuvius, descending on the doomed 
city. The crowd stood paralyzed with horror in the deepening 
twilight of approaching doom. The next instant the heaving, 
falling ruins and a cloud of ashes proclaimed the close of the last 
day of Pompeii. 



A RIDE FOR RESCUE. 

Theodore Winthrop. 

The murderers of Armstrong and the abductors of Lucy were 
the same. If we would save the innocent, and avenge the mur- 
derer, we must ride at once and swiftly. Beyond the Sierras the 
villains were safe. 

" Spend, but waste not," — not a step, not a breath, in that 
gallop for life ! This must be our motto. 

We tliree rode abreast over the sere, brown plain on our gallop 
to save and to slay. Far ! ah ! how terribly dim and distant 1 
was the Sierra, a slowly lifting cloud. Slowly, slowly they lifted, 
those gracious heights, while we sped over the harsh levels of 
the desert. 

So we galloped, neck and neck, hoof Avith hoof, steadily quick- 
ening our pace. We must make the most of the levels. Rougher 
work, cruel obstacles were before. All the wild, triumphant music 
I had ever heard came and sang in my ears to the flinging cadence 



A BIDE FOR RESCUE. 227 

of the resonant feet, tramping on hollow arches of the volcanic 
rock, over great vacant chasms underneath. 

Sweet and soft around us melted the hazy air of October ; and 
its warm, flickering currents shook like a veil of gauzy gold 
between us and the blue bloom of the mountains, far away, but 
nearing now, and lifting step by step. 

And now, in front, the purple Sierra was growing brown and 
rising up a distinct wall, cleft visibly with dell, giilly, ravine, and 
canon. The saw-teeth of the ridge defined themselves sharply 
into peak and pinnacle. Broad fields of cool snow gleamed upon 
the summits. The trail was everywhere plain ; no prairie craft was 
needed to trace it ; here the chase had gone but a few hours ago. 

ISTow the brown Sierra was close at hand. Its glittering, icy 
summit, above the dark and sheeny walls, far above the black 
phalanxes of clambering pines, stooped forward, and hung over us 
as we rode. The gap, our goal all day, opened before us, grand 
and terrible. Some giant force had clutched the mountains, and 
riven them narrowly apart. The wild defile gaped ; then wound 
away and closed, lost between its mighty walls a thousand feet 
high, and bearing two brother pyramids of purple cliffs aloft far 
above the snow line. A fearful portal into a scene of the throes 
and agonies of earth ! Over the slippery rocks, over the sheeny 
pavement, plunging through the loose stones, leaping the arroyo, 
down, up, always on — ^on we went clinging as we might. It 
seemed one beat of time, it seemed an eternity, when between the 
ringing of the hoofs I heard Brent whisper, " We are there." 
The crags flung apart, right and left ; I saw a sylvan glade ; I saw 
the gleam of rushing water. Fulano dashed on, uncontrollable. 
There they were, — the murderers, arrived but one moment ; the 
lady still bound to that pack-mule branded "A and A." Murker 
saw us first. He snatched his six-shooter and fired. 

Before the murderer could cock again, Fulano was upon him. 
He was ridden down, crushed, abolished. He breathed once as 
we lifted him. Then a tranquil, childlike look stole over his 



228 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

face — that well-known look of the weary body thankful that the 
turbulent soul has gone. Murker was dead. Our gallop was 
over ; the saving and the slaying were accomplished. 



THE liAST APPEARANCE OF HENRY VI. 

J. F. Kirk. 

The termination of the long protracted " War of the Roses " 
was close at hand. Warwick, the king-maker, alienated from the 
Yorkists, had humbled himself before Margaret of Anjou ; had 
pledged himself to her cause ; had affianced his daughter to a son 
of the Lancastrian king; and was now ready, mth the aid of 
Trance, to kindle anew the flames of civil Avar in England. 

On the 13th of September, 1470, Warwick and his army landed 
at Dartmouth ; in a few days more six thousand men had collected 
around his standard, the same standard that had gone down before 
him on so many bloody fields. 

Edward, with strange infatuation, omitted all means of safety. 
His soldiers deserted ; the red rose was assumed, and the war-cry 
of Lancaster Avas heard in his own camp. Less than a fortnight 
elapsed, and the revolution seemed to be complete. Warwick 
met Avith no resistance at his entrance into London, where his 
first act was to open the prison doors Avhich he himself had closed 
on the unfortunate Henry. Was it a reality or a shadoAv that 
came forth to occupy the throne 1 Six years before, that pale, 
meek figure, divested of crown, scepter, and regal apparel, bound 
AAdth ropes like a convicted felon, had folloAved Warwick through 
the streets, amid a jeering multitude, to be immured in the toAver ; 
and now, pale and meek as then, innocent and imbecde as Avhen, 
half a century before, presented to the people of tAvo great realms 
as their common sovereign, it passed through the same streets, 
behind the same proud soldier, amid a silent, Avondering throng, 
to be invested anew Avith the trappings of royalty, to play the 
same puppet-like part on a stormy and croAvded stage. 



ALEXANDER HAMILTON AND BEN J, DISEAELL 220 

The grim ghosts of shuightered Talbots, Somersets, and Cliffords, 
of the many thousands that on French and English soil had died 
in defending the rights of the son of Henry the fifth, would have 
formed the fittest cortege in this triumph of their phantom king. 
A phantom indeed he was ! So long as he had remained secluded 
from the world, imagination might invest him with the virtues of 
a saint, and pity create a sympathy in his behalf ; but when again 
brought before the public eye, nothing was visible but his inca- 
pacity. 

In less than six months, Edward again appeared and marched 
to London. Tewksbury followed ; and on that bloody field per- 
ished the last hope of the house of Lancaster. In a few days more, 
the imbecile Henry, so long the buffet of varying fortune, died by 
violence in his prison ; and of all who had stood forth to assert 
his claim, one figure alone remained — Margaret of Anjou — the 
widowed, childless, desolate queen. 



ALEXANDER HAMILTON AND BENJAMIN DISRAELI. 

H. H. Parsons. 

. Separated by race, religion, politics, country, age — widely dif- 
ferent in habits of thought and methods of work — actuated by 
motives as far removed as pole from pole, Alexander Hamilton and 
Benjamin Disraeli present a striking contrast. 

Both were men of unquestioned talents. Hamilton's genius 
was practical, receptive, adaptive, creative ; that of Disraeli, brill- 
iant, imaginative, erratic, paradoxical. The weapons of one were 
logic, argument, appeals to man's higher nature ; those of the other, 
wit, sarcasm, appeals to the imagination. The one convinced, the 
other dazzled. Each the head of a great party, the one led by the 
force of preeminent ability, the other by flattery, promises, taunts, 
and threats. 

Hamilton believed that work alone conquers. Disraeli had 
implicit faith in the " star of destiny." Thoroughness, knowledge 



230 FRANKLIN SPEAKER, 

of details, complete mastery of every subject was the secret 
of the former's success; an intense and unwavering conviction 
of his " great future " Avas the ever-impelling incentive of the 
latter. 

Both were ambitious, but their ambition was Avidely unlike. 
Hamilton was ambitious that the nation might become gi*and and 
glorious ; Disraeli, that his OAvn name might become the sjTionym 
for greatness and power. " Country " Avas the ever-present thought 
in the mind of one; "Self" the all-predominating idea of the 
other. Eternal principles of truth and justice were the guides of 
Hamilton's conduct ; expediency the rule of Disraeli's actions. 
The one was a molder of public thought, the other a follower. 
Hamilton based all legislation on the " great laws of nature ;' Dis- 
raeli shaped his measures to match the ever varying shades of 
fitful public sentiment. 

The measure of a man should be the influence which he leaves 
behind him. Tried by such a standard, the contrast between the 
two becomes even more marked. The waning splendor of Dis- 
raeli's genius pales before the enduring glory of Hamilton's. 
Hamilton is lost in the grandeur of his work, while in Disraeli's 
life the man himself is continually before the mind. The life of 
Hamilton is knit with that of his country. His lasting monument 
must be the growing greatness of that nation whose arms he did 
so much to make victorious, whose government he framed, whose 
credit he restored, whose policy he shaped, and whose name he 
made respected in all the hostile courts of Europe. Disraeli must 
be remembered chiefly as the author of a brilliant foreign policy 
which, whether born of pride and glory or of sound statesmanship, 
time must still decide. The one labored for all time, the other 
for temporary power. 

But a few years in his grave, Disraeli's influence is rapidly pass- 
ing away, wliile Hamilton's great Avork is calling forth increasing 
admiration, and his fame shines with an added luster with every 
passing year. The character of the latter will live as an inspira- 



231 

tioii to unselfish effort and lofty patriotism, that of the other as 
an example of the power of a determined will when coupled Avith 
a grand, all-ruling passion. 



"LA MARSEILLAISE." 

Alphonse de Lamaetine. 



\ The revolutionary idea seemed to have assumed the guise of 
mortal, and to be marching to the assault of tlie last remnant of 
j loyalty. 

j Fifteen hundred men, the fire of the soul of the South, coming 

\\ to rekindle the flame flickering on the national hearth, were 

' marching to Paris. They sung a terrible song as they progressed 

' — it is graven on the heart of France. These words were sung in 

notes alternately flat and sharp, which seemed to come from the 

breast with sullen murmurings of national anger, and then with 

the joy of victory. They had something as solemn as death, but 

as serene as the undying confidence of patriotism. It seemed a 

I recovered echo of Thermopylae — it was heroism sung. 

j It made one shudder, but it was the shudder of intrepidity 

which passed over the heart, and gave an impulse, — redoubled 

energy — veiled death. The hymn which was at that moment in 

all mouths will never perish. 

It is not profaned on common occasions. Like those sacred 
banners which are suspended from the roofs of holy edifices and 
which are only on certain days allowed to leave them, the national 
song is kept as an extreme arm for the great necessities of the 
j country. Glory and crime, victory and death, seem intertwined 
in its chorus. It is the song of patriotism and the imprecation of 
j rage — at once a psean and a knell. 

There was a young officer of the garrison at Strasburg named 

Kouget De Lisle. At the house of an Alsatian patriot, Dietrich, 

I he was a continual guest. It was midnight and very cold. This 

j dreamer, at once poet and musician, staggered to his lonely cham- 



232 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

ber, from a repast where wine and beauty had given impulse and 
fire to his imagination. On his small clavicord, now composing 
the air before the words, and now the words before the air, he 
combined the tAvo so intimately that he never could tell which 
was first produced. Overcome by this divine inspiration, his head 
bowed in slumber, and he did not awake until daylight. 

The song of the night returned to his memory with difficulty, like 
the recollections of a dream. He wrote it down and sang it. At 
the first verse, the countenances of those that heard it turned pale ; 
at the second, tears flowed ; at the last, enthusiasm burst forth. 

The hymn of the country was found. The new song executed 
some days afterward at Strasburg, flew from city to city. It was 
sung at the sittings of revolutionary clubs. It was sung over all 
France. 

De Lisle's mother, a royalist and religious, alarmed at the sound 
of her son's voice, wrote to him : " "Wliat is this revolutionary 
hymn, sung by the bands of brigands traversing France, and with 
which our name is connected?" De Lisle himself, proscribed as 
a royalist, heard it and shuddered as it sounded on his ears, wliilst 
escaping by some of the wild passes of the Alps. " What do they 
call that hymn ?" he inquired of his guide. " La Marseillaise," 
replied the peasant. 

It was thus he learned the name of his own work. The arm 
turned against the hand that forged it. The revolution, insane 
no longer, recognized its OAvn voice ! 



SENSE AND SENTIMENT. 

We jeer at sentiment sometimes, and are apt to plume ourselves 
upon our practical common sense. Poetry and all that is well 
enough in its way, we think ; but common sense is eminently to 
be praised ; and every departure from it is an indication of weak- 
ness. iNTearly every one of us takes this vieAV of the matter : or 



SENSE AND SENTIMENT. 233 

rather, nearly everybody thinks that he thinks this way, while, in 
fact, he does nothing of the kind. 

We may cultivate practical ways of looking at things until we 
think we have squeezed the last trace of sentiment out of our- 
selves, and after all is done there will remain a vast deal of what 
we call nonsense mixed up in our composition. The thing is born 
in us, and cannot be eradicated, because it is the best part of us. 

The master of a tug-boat, a blunt fellow who probably never 
read a line of poetry in his life, spoke a grand epic in homely 
phrase not long ago. When the " JS'orthfleet " went down in the 
British Channel, he dared every thing to rescue a handful of the 
perishing. Wlien some one asked him who would pay him for 
his work, he blurted out : " Pay me ! I don't want no money ! 
But seeing as there's medals knocking about, I don't say that if 
one of them was to come my way, I should say ' no ' to having it 
handed over. I should like a medal, if it was only made of 
leather, and didn't cost tuppence ha'penny." There was no mock 
heroic there, but the man was full of poetry to his very throat. 

A flag is but a yard or two of bunting ; but the men who have 
been willing to die for it, all these hundreds of years, have seen 
in it something more than coarse cloth. An English regiment in 
India had its colors taken from it for some act of insubordination. 
Common sense Avould laugh at such a punishment for such men. 
Why should any one of them mind the taking away of a regi- 
mental flag 1 

A difficult fort was to be taken. The enterprise was one of 
extreme peril. The commander rode down the lines to the posi- 
tion occupied by the disgraced regiment. 

"Men," he cried, "your colors are at the top of that hill. 
Charge ! " And charge they did — up the long hill, through the 
abatis, over the ramparts, into the fort at last, — a mere handful 
of them left to take the flag for which two-thirds of them had 
^iven their lives. There was mo common sense about the matter, 
1 jtlie poetry in the heart of the rough soldiers overbore all that. 



234 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

Away with mawkish sentiment that apes the true impulse of 
man's nature ; but exalt forever that inborn principle which is 
the life and strength of nobility. It is this which shines in the 
deeds which time and truth delight to honor. It is poetry that 
inspires self-forgetting action ; it is poetry that makes dying a 
passionate joy ; it is poetry in the hearts of the living that turns 
gently and with solemn reverence to do its homage to the heroism 
of the dead. 



KATIE'S ANSWER. 



OcH, Katie's a rogue, it is thrue, 
But her eyes, like the sky, are so blue 

An' her dimples so shwate, 

An' her ankles so nate, 
She dazed and she bothered me too. 

Till one mornin' we wint for a ride ; 
Whin demure as a bride, by my side 

The darlint she sat, 

Wid the wickedest hat 
' Neath a purty girl's chin ever tied. 

An' my heart, arrah thin how it bate ; 
For my Kate looked so temptin' an' shwate 

Wid cheeks like the roses, 

An' all the red posies 
That gTOW in her garden so nate. 

But I sat just as mute as the dead 
TiU she said, wid a toss of her head, 

" If I'd known that to-day 

Ye'd have nothing to say, 
I'd have gone with my cousin instead." 



BATTLES. ^35 

Thin I felt myself grow very bold ; 
For I knew she'd not scold if I told 

Of the love in my heart, 

That would never depart, 
Though I lived to be wrinkled and old. 

An' I said : '• If I dared to do so, 
I'd let go of the baste an' I'd throw 

Both arms round your waist 

An' be stalin' a taste 
Of thim lips that are coaxing me so." 

Thin she blushed a more illegant red. 
As she said widout raising her head, 
An' her eyes lookin' down 
Neath her lashes so brown, 
" Would ye like me to drive, Misther Ted?" 



BATTLES. 

Oben Boot, Jr. 

Despite the peaceful tendencies of peoples and the urgent efforts 
of diplomacy, war will even now sometimes devastate, and battles 
thrill. 

They are terrible things, these battles : sublime in elements, 
fearful in conduct, awful in immediate results, wonderful in ulti- 
mate consequences. An army is aggregated, human, physical 
power intensified by all the inventive ingenuity of man. Over an 
army how many prayers are hovering ; with it, what thousands of 
deep heart-wishes are marching. For the army, the excitement 
and rush of conflict ; for others, the agony, terrible, often pro- 
longed, of fear and suspense. Fathers fight here ; and away, 
children yearn and long for their kind embrace and watchful care. 
I Husbands fight ; and by the lonely hearth-stones fond wives shud- 



236 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

der in their desolation. Sons are keeping step to bugle and 
drum; and gray-haired sires and mothers afar, vaijily strive to 
still the heart-throbs that will beat loud and quick in parental love 
and fear. 

Ambition is on the field, urging subalterns towards promotion — 
firing chieftains to strive for glory. Duty is there — stern obedi- 
ence — even unto death ; blind brutality, rejoicing in carnage. 
Quick thoughts of home, love, life — a thrill, then fierce excitement 
— and the armies are engaged. Batteries speak in thunder — strike 
with bolts ; lines of musketry speak, sharp, rapid, continuous. 
Forward! the mass; men fall — die; backward! shame, despera- 
tion, instinct for life, determination to conquer, fight their o^vn 
battle in the shattered ranks. 

A great battle is fearfully sublime in its physical aspects. The 
scores of thousands of Persia hurling themselves vainly on the 
Macedonian phalanx ; hosts of naked Germans dashing themselves 
against the Roman legions, like waves on rocks ; Mamelukes sweep- 
ing round and round the French squares amid the whirling sands 
about the Pyramids ; Macdonald at Wagram ; ]N'ey at AVaterloo ; 
the Light Brigade at Balaclava ; Hooker on Lookout ; individuals 
torn, bleeding, dying by thousands ; woful ! — the mass, the army, . 
the tremendous aggregate, terribly grand ! 

The individuals of the battle stand for home, affection, ambi- 
tion, human life. The army means ideas, — justice, freedom, 
nationality, religion — the world's life; against these, despotism, 
enslavement, conquest, persecution — the world's curses. ' 

Monarchs battle for power ; nations, for existence ; people, for 
rights. On every continent and island, fields have been watered 
with blood, strewed with bones of battling hosts. The names of 
the actors are, for the most, forgotten, years, centuries ago. But 
their life and struggle and death were the price of the world's 
advance. Marathon saved Greek culture and the world's civiliza- 
tion. Barbarian intrepidity tried legionary valor until at last the 
barbarians conquered, and there came, by and by, new vigor to 



THE COURTSHIP OF LARRF O'DEE. 237 

European progress. Saratoga, Princeton, Yorktowii made America 
for history. Magenta and Solferino resurrected Italian nationality; 
and Sadowa banded Germany into a united people. 

I And after the battle 1 Wounded ! dying ! dead ! No sub- 
limity — only death and terror. After the battle 1 Homes desolate ! 
hearts stricken ! — widows ! orphans ! mourners for the lost ! No 
grandeur, only sorrow and sighing and tears. These conflicts — 
force against force, brutality made more brutal by mind — necessities 
thus far in the world's progress — shall they never cease ? Ay ! they 
shall. " The lion and the lamb shall lie down together." Ay ! in 

j God's good time. 



COURTSHIP OF LARRY O'DEE. 

W. W. Fink. 

Now the Widow McGee 

And Larry O'Dee 

Had two little cottages, out on the green, 

With just enough room for two pig-pens between. 

The widow was young, and the widow was fair, 

With the brightest of eyes and the brownest of hair, 

And it frequently chanced, when she came in the morn. 

With the swill for her pig, Larry came with the corn, 

And some of the ears that he tossed from his hand 

In the pen of the widow were certain to land. 



One morning said he : 

" Och ! Misthress McGee, 

Its a washte of good lumber this running two rigs, 

Wid a fancy petition betwane our two pigs ! " 

" Indade, sure it is ! " answered Widow McGee, 

With the sweetest of smiles upon Larry O'Dee. 

" And thin it looks kind o' hard-hearted and mane 

Kapin' two frindly pigs so exsaidin'ly near, 

That whinever one grunts thin the other can hear, 

And yit kape a cruel petition betwane ! " 






238 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

" Shwate Widow McGee," 

Answered Larry O'Dee, 

" If ye fale in yer heart we are mane to the pigs, 

Ain't we mane to oursilves to be runnin' two rigs 1 \ 

Och ! it made me heart ache whin I paped through the cracks 

Of me shanty, last IMarch, at yez shwingin' yer ax. 

An' a bobbin' yer head, an' a shtompin' yer fate, 

Wid yer purrty white hands jisht as red as a bate, L 

A-sphlittin yer kindlin-wood out in the shtorm, 

Wliin one little shtove it would kape us both warm." 

" [N'ow, piggy," said she, 

" Larry's courtin o' me, 

Wid his dilicate, tinder allusion to you ; 

So now yez musht tell me jusht what I musht do. 

For, if I'm to say yes, shtir the shwill wid yer shnout ; 

But if I'm to say no, yez musht kape yer nose out." 

" ]S"ow, Larry, for shame ! to be bribin' a pig 

By a-tossin' a handful of corn in its shwig ! " 

"Me darlint, the piggy says yes !^^ answered he; 

And that was the courtship of Larry O'Dee. 



A PLEA IN A DIVORCE SUIT. 

W, D. HOWELLS. 

I THANK tlie Court for this immediate opportunity to redress 
an atrocious wrong ; to vindicate an innocent and injured woman. 
By a chance which I shall not be the last to describe as providen- 
tial, the notice Avhich your law requires to be given came to her 
hands. By one chance, more or less, it Avould not have reached 
her; and a monstrous crime against justice would have been 
irrevocably accomplished. 

For she had mourned this man as dead — dead to the universal 
frame of things — when he was only dead to honor, dead to duty, 



A PLEA IX A DIVORCE SUIT. 239 

dead to her ; and it was that newspaper, sent ahnost at random 
through the mail, which convinced her that he was still in such 
life as a man may live who has survived his own soul. We are 
therefore here, standing upon our right, and prepared to prove it 
God's right and the everlasting truth. 

Two days ago, a thousand miles and a thousand uncertainties 
intervened between us and this Court ; but now we are here to 
show that the defendant, basely defamed by the plea of abandon- 
ment, returned to her home within an hour after she had parted 
there with the plaintiff, and has remained there day and night ever 
since. Did I say she had never absented herself during all this 
time 1 I spoke hastily. She did absent herself at one time for 
three days while she could come home to close her mother's dying 
eyes and help me lay her in the grave. Perhaps the plaintiff did 
return in this interval, and, finding her gone, was confirmed in the 
belief that she had abandoned him ! If the plaintiff indeed came 
at that time, the walls of those empty rooms into which he peered, 
like a thief in the night, might have told him — if walls had 
tongues to speak as they have ears to hear — a tale that would have 
melted even his heart with remorse and shame. 

They might have told him of a woman waiting in cold and 
hunger for his return, and willing to starve and freeze rather than 
own herself forsaken, waiting until she was hunted from her door 
by the creditors he had defrauded, and forced to confess her dis- 
grace and her despair. 

This is the history of the first two weeks of those two years 
during which, as his perjured lips have sworn, he was using every 
effort to secure her return to him. I will not linger now upon 
this history, nor upon that of the days and weeks and months that 
followed, wringing the heart and all but crazing the brain of the 
wife who would not even in the darkest hours of her desolation 
believe herself Avillfully forsaken. But we have the record im- 
broken and irrefragable, which shall not only right his victim, but 
shall bring yonder perjurer to justice. 



240 FRANKLIN SPEAKER, 



THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR. 

George W. Curtis. 

Germany had rushed together with a clang. ^Rapoleon III., 
with that strange incapacity to comprehend popular feeling which 
he had betrayed throughout his career, evidently imagined that 
the conquered states of Germany would welcome an invasion that 
might relieve them of their fetters. Exiles, embittered by unde- 
served misfortune, had told liim so ; envoys, accustomed to live 
among the limited class which, partly from tradition and partly from 
cosmopolitan training, hated the stern regime of the Hohenzollerns, 
repeated the same tale ; the Ultramontanes indorsed the envoy's 
dispatches ; and, finally, the secret agents, mixing only with men 
who are to Germans what Fenians are to Englishmen, struck the 
impression home. 

The war must be directed against Prussia alone ; and then 
Hanover would rise; Saxony would rebel; Schleswig Holstein 
would demand its prince ; Wiirtemberg would declare war on 
Prussia ; Bavaria would accept Austrian advice ; Germany would 
melt down like a waterspout under the concussion of the cannon. 

AYar was declared — war intended to crush the German oppressor ; 
and all Germany at the oppressor's summons rushed together 
as if a HohenzoUern already wore the imperial cro^vn. Particu- 
larist and Ultramontane, noble and burgher, the classes which love 
the past, and the traders who dread military conscriptions, all laid 
aside their grievances to defend the united Fatherland. Bavaria 
declared war on France. Wiirtemberg declared war on France. 
Saxony demanded energetic action against the French; and 
formally claimed her place in the vanguard of the battle. Han- 
over proclaimed in great meetings her devotion to the federation. 
Bremen arose in insurrection against a merchant who criticised 
Prussian arrogance. Hamburg sent volunteers, and doubled the 
money asked. The universities on the Rhine were deserted — all 
students hastening to the ranks. The opposition, so jealous of the 



GENIUS OF WASHINGTON. 241 

purse, so hostile to the new military system, voted twenty-live 
million pounds to bring that system to perfection. 

The wildest fanatics of liberty, with Karl Blind at their head, 
called on tlie soldier king to defend Germany with the sword. 
The very emigrants, flying from conscription, and safely arriving in 
New York, returned to l^ear, in the slavery they hated, their share 
in the common duty of defending Germany from subjugation. 
From Posen to Italy, from Silesia to Cologne, the German people 
rose in arms. 

The mobilization was complete ; and the great Teutonic people, 
stubborn as Englishmen, educated as Yankees, organized like 
Frenchmen, full of knowledge and burning with zeal, with a 
million of trained soldiers as their vanguard, poured down on 
France, to settle, once for all, whether Teuton or Latin was to be 
leader of the world. 



GENIUS OF WASHINGTON. 

I E. P. Whipple. 

I This illustrious man, at once the world's admiration and enigma, 
we are taught by a fine instinct to venerate, and by a wrong 
opinion to misjudge. How many times, have we been told that 
Washington was not a man of genius, but a person of excel- 
lent common sense, of admirable judgment, of rare virtues. Now 
the sooner this bundle of mediocre talents and moral qualities, 
which its contrivers have the audacity to call George Washington, 
is hissed out of existence, the better it will be for the cause of 
talents and for the cause of morals. Contempt of this is the be- 
ginning of wisdom. 

He had no genius it seems ! Oh no ! Genius we must sup- 
pose is the peculiar and shining attribute of some orator whose 
tongue can spout patriotic speeches, or of some versifier whose muse 
can " Hail Columbia," but not of the man who supported States 

I on his arm, and carried America in his brain. The madcap Charles 

I 11 

I 
I 



242 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

Townsend, the motion of whose pyrotechnic mind is like the whiz 
of a hundred rockets, is a man of genius; but George Washing- , 
ton, raised Tip above the level of even eminent statesmen, and with 
a nature moving Avith the still and orderly celerity of a planet 
round its sun, he dwindles in comparison into a kind of angelic ] 
dunce. A¥liat is genius? Is it worth any thing? Is splendid 
folly the measure of its inspiration ? Is not wisdom its base and 
summit ? 

By what definition do you award the name to the author of an 
epic, and deny it to the creator of a country ? By what principle 
is it to be lavished upon ?iim who sculptures in perishing marble 
the image of possible excellence, and withheld from him who built 
up in himself a transcendent character, indestructible as the obli- 
gations of duty and beautiful as her rewards ? He belongs to that 
rare class of men, rare as Homers and Miltons, rare as Platos and 
Newtons, who have impressed their characters upon nations, with- 
out pampering national vices ; the men in whom strength and judg- 
ment seem identical with volition ; the men whose vital expression 
is not in words, but in deeds ; the men whose sublime ideas issue 
necessarily in sublime acts, not in sublime art. 

Such men have natures broad enough to include all the facts of 
a people's practical life, and deep enough to discern the spiritual 
laws wliich animate and govern those facts. 



SABATOaA. 

^O. 1. 

Horatio Seymouk. 

One hundred years ago, on this spot, American Independence 
was made a great fact in the history of nations. Until the sur- 
render of the British army under Burgoyne, the Declaration of 
Independence was but a declaration. It was a patriotic purpose 
asserted in bold words by brave men, who pledged for its main- 
tenance, their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. But 



SARATOGA. 243 

on tins ground it was made a. fact, by virtue of armed force. It 
had been regarded by the world merely as an act of defiance, but 
it was now seen that it contfiined the germs of government, which 
the event we now celebrate made one of the powers of the earth. 
Here rebellion was made revolution. Upon this ground, that 
which had in the eye of the law been treason, became triumphant 
patriotism. 

At the break of day, one hundred years ago, in the judgment of 
the world, our fathers were rebels against established authority. 
When the echoes of the evening gun died away along this valley, 
they were patriots who had rescued their country from wrong and 
outrage. Until the surrender of the British army in this valley, 
no nation Avould recognize the agents of the Continental Congress. 
All intercourse with them was in stealthy ways. But they were 
met with open congratulations when the monarchs of Europe 
learned that the loyal standards of Britain had been lowered to our 
flag. We had passed through the baptism of blood, and had gained 
a name among the nations of the earth. England had arrayed 
its disciplined armies, it had sent its fleets j it had called forth its 
savage allies, all of which were to move upon grand converging 
lines, not only to crush out the patriotic forces, but to impress 
Europe with its strength, and to check any alliances with the 
American Government. It made them witnesses of its defeat 
when it thought to make them the judges of its triumph. The 
monarchs of Europe, who watched the progress of the doubtful 
struggle, Avho were uncertain if it was more than a popular dis- 
turbance, now saw the action in its full proportions, and felt that 
a new power had sprung into existence — a new element had 
entered into the diplomacy of the world. 

We are told that during more than twenty centuries of war 

and bloodshed, only fifteen battles have been decisive of lasting 

results. The contest of Saratoga is one of these. From the 

battle of Marathon, to the field of AVaterloo, a period of more than 

! two thousand years, there was no martial event which had a 



244 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

greater influence upon human affairs than that which took place 
on these grounds. 

We build here a lasting monument, that shall tell of our grati- 
tude to those who, through suffering and sacrifice, WTOught out 
the independence of our country. 



SARATOGA. 

No. 2. 

George W. Curtis. 

Within the territory of New York, broad, fertile, and fair, 
from Montauk to Niagara, from the Adirondacks to the Bay, there 
is no more memorable spot than that on which we stand. Else- 
where, indeed, the great outlines of the landscape are more im- 
posing, and on this autumnal day the parting benediction of the 
year rests with the same glory on other hills and other waters of 
the imperial State. Far above, these gentle heights rise into 
towering mountains ; far below, this placid stream broadens and 
deepens around the metropolis of the continent into a spacious 
highway for the commerce of the world. 

Other valleys, Avith teeming intervale and fruitful upland, rich 
with romantic tradition and patriotic story, filled like this with 
happy homes and humming workshops, wind through the vast 
commonwealth, ample channels of its various life ; and town and 
city, village and hamlet, church and school, everpvhere illustrate 
and promote the prosperous repose of a community great, intelli- 
gent, and free. But this spot alone within our borders is conse- 
crated as the scene of one of the decisive events that affect the 
course of history. There are deeds on which the welfare of the 
world seems to be staked ; conflicts in which liberty is lost or 
won ; victories by which the standard of human progress is full 
high advanced. Between sunrise and sunset, on some chance field 
the deed is done, but from that day it is a field enchanted. 
Imagination invests it with 

' The light that never was on sea or land. " 



, SARATOGA. 245 

i 

I The grateful heart of mankind repeats its name ; Heroism feeds 
I upon its story ; Patriotism kindles with its perennial fire. Such 
' is the field on which we stand. It is not ours. It does not be- 
\ long to New York, nor to America. It is an independent estate 
j of the world, like the field of Arbela, of Tours, of Hastings, of 
' Waterloo ; and the same lofty charm that draws the pilgrim to the 
I plain of Marathon resistlessly leads him to the field of Saratoga. 
The drama of the Revolution opened in New England, culmi- 
nated in New York, and closed in Virginia. Paul Revere's 
lantern shone through the valley of the Hudson, and flashed along 
the cliffs of the Blue Ridge. The scattering volley of Lexington 
Green swelled to the triumphant thunder of Saratoga ; and the 
reverberation of Burgoyne's falling arms in New York shook those 
of Cornwallis in Virginia from his hands. Doubts, jealousies, 
prejudices, were merged in one common devotion. The union of 
the colonies to secure liberty foretold the union of the States to 
maintain it ; and wherever we stand on revolutionary fields, or in- 
hale the sweetness of revolutionary memories, we tread the ground, 
and breathe the air of invincible national union. 

With the story of Burgoyne's surrender — the revolutionary 
glory of the State of New York — still fresh in our memories, amid 
these thousands of her sons and daughters, whose hearts glow with 
lofty pride, I am glad that the hallowed spot on which we stand 
compels us to remember, not only the imperial State, but the 
national commonwealth, whose young hands here together struck 
the blow^, and on whose 'older head descends the ample benediction 
of the victory. On yonder height, a hundred years ago, Virginia 
and Pennsylvania lay encamped. Beyond, and further to the 
north, watched New Hampshire and Vermont. Here, in the 
wooded uplands at the south, stood New Jersey and New York ; 
while across the river to the east, Connecticut and Massachusetts 
closed the triumphant line. Here was the symbol of the Revolu- 
tion — a common cause, a common strife, a common triumph — the 
cause, not of a class, but of human nature — the triumph, not of a 
colony, but of a United America. 



246 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 



WHAT PHILANTHROPY OWES TO CHRISTIANITY. 

Edward W. Datjtel. 

Philanthropy existed before Christ came. There had been abun- 
dant expressions of personal love towards friends and countrymen, 
and individual acts of charity. Philosophers had striven by their 
teachings to alleviate the woes of humanity ; they had given the 
" Golden Rule " as a precept, and some of them had illustrated it 
in their lives. Yet philosophy, existent, taught, practiced before 
the Christian era, owes much to Christianity. 

Wlien yellow fever terrifies Memphis or IS^ew Orleans, Christian 
heroes and heroines, with definite plans and ample means, taking 
their lives in their hands, go to the stricken cities to care for 
the sick, and comfort the afflicted. When war rages, the "Red 
Cross of Geneva," worn on blood-stained battle fields or among the 
wounded of the hospitals, tells of organized Christian philan- 
thropy. 

Christian philanthropy is aggressive. It is not content with 
helping those near by; every man is neighbor to the Christian 
philanthropist. So Howard dies in an Eastern prison ; Florence 
Nightingale nurses the wounded — English and French, Sardinians, 
Russians, and Turks alike — in the far Crimea ; and Sister Dora p 
leaves her home and its comforts to soothe the maimed and sick 
of dingy, crowded hospitals ; America sends grain to starving 
Ireland ; and from all Christendom comes aid to burned Chicago I 
and fever-stricken Memphis. 

AYhat does philanthropy owe to Christianity ? Christianity has 
organized philanthropy so that to-day works of love for men 
employ a vast army of earnest workers with definite plans and 
abundant resources. Christianity has so broadened philanthropy 
that no boundary of mountain range or sweeping river or sounding 
sea, no barrier of alien speech or birth or religion, limits its devo- 
tion. 

Christianity has made philanthropy so aggressive, that it ranges 



HUMANITY NOT SELF-SUFFICIENT. 247 

tfar and Avide to seek and to save, to find and to comfort. Christian- 
|ity has lifted philanthropy above a care for merely the lower life 
land comforts of humanity, into an absorbing, earnest zeal for the 
I leternal welfare of all for whom Christ died. 

i'rom Christianity organized philanthropy sprang into existence, 
Igrciw into grandeur, and is ripening continually into a richer harvest. 
Pliilanthropy owes its organization, its universality, its aggressive 
force, its spiritual influence to Christianity. The debt is all- 
Dmbl•acin<^ 



HUMANITY NOT SELF-SUFFICIENT. 

W. H. De Shon. 

i Percv Shelley was one of the few great-hearted men the 
Iworld lias seen. Endowed with a subtle purity and keenness of 
intellect, a classic beauty of expression, a yearning tenderness 
toward all of God's creatures, no poet appeals so tenderly to our 
love for the pure, the beautiful, the true, to our respect for our 
jfellow-men, to our heartfelt charity for human weakness, as 
iShelley. And yet the blue ]\Iediterranean chanted a troubled 
requiem when the light of his life went out in its waters. The 
sunny Italian sky looked grimly down when the sea l)eneath sang 
hoarsely to rest her laureate. 

Doubt was the littleness of Shelley, to which all others were 
subservient. Xo mortal power can save a man from destruction 
whose soul is thus fettered. One incident in his life is sufficient 
to show the subtle power of doubt over the truest poet of our 
century. 

At the foot of Mont Blanc, under the shadow of its awful 
presence, within sight of its eternal snows, within hearing of its 
sweeping avalanches, the startled traveler sees written on the face 
of the Hving rock, "P. Shelley, Atheist." Atheld ! and the sul> 
lime reverence of every snow-capped summit acknowledging the 
Creator. Atheist ! and the breathless solitude, unbroken save by 
the anthems of the avalanches, thrilling with divinity. Xo God ! 



248 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

and lie, a child of nature, a lover of the simplest flower, a worshiper 
of the tiniest bird. An infidel philanthropist ! and God alone 
the source of love. A doubting reformer ! and right triumphing 
only through faith in the Infinite. 

Of the many absurd theories advanced by a set of dreamers and 
enthusiasts, none is more fallacious than one which, even in 
sedate New England, numbers its votaries by thousands. "Abolish 
old forms, old creeds, old dogmas," says the freethinker, "and 
humanity will assert itself. The era of peace, purity, and frater- 
nal love will dawn. One law will govern the world : ' Thou shaltt 
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and thy neighbor asi 
thyself.'" Humanity assert itself! Humanity save the world! 
Humanity, the herald of peace, purity, and fraternal love ! The 
lifelong struggles between the greatness and littleness of eminent 
men in all ages have proved emphatically that humanity, of itself, 
can never become perfect. 

The most exemplary of men have their failings. Peter denied 
his Master. Moses, the chosen of God, never entered the 
promised land. The most perfect of all men brought sin into the 
world. Xot until Christianity has disunited greatness and Httle- 
ness can the world hope for its millennium. 



DEATH. 

Edward A. Terry. 

We are accustomed to think of death only as it enters our scenes 
of joy, standing chill and silent in our homes, hushing the song 
of the hearth-side, and summoning away the faces of loved ones ; 
we feel it only where it has wounded sorely; we touch it only 
with our hearts and our instincts, and a cold, unwelcome thing it" 
is indeed. From such a point of view death is the end of all our: 
purposes, of all our projects. It blanches the cheek of promise, 
and touches with silver the locks that were golden, and draws: 
rudely apart the hands that were joined in the holiest friendship. 



DEATH. 249 

Death is thus the most awful of all farewells, because there is 
[no echo of a meeting in its endless good-by. All other partings 
ton the earth have in tlieni the one little sweetening element of 
[hope and a looking for another greeting ; all other farewells seem 

father darkness dying into the approaching dawn ; but death is 
he darkness deepening into endless night. 

Now turn from this hopeless vision, and with the far-seeing eye 
bf Christian faith look heavenward through death's portal. How 
the golden vista stretches away into the luminous depths ! 

The vicissitudes of time do not reach into that changeless abode, 
'|bhe fluctuations of human feeling cannot linger there, and even 
he fickle heart of man must there abandon its inconstancy. The 
'(brightness of that paradise can never diminish, for the everlasting 
^dory of the Lord is the sun that enlightens it ; its bliss can never 
iecrease, for the unchanging God is the source of its abiding 
peace ; its enduring joys can never satiate, for the boundless 
beauty of the all-surpassing God will forever unfold new attrac- 
'pions, forever discover to the eager soul new motives, new reasons 
lior an ever-growing love. 

{ Death is now no more, nor grief, nor sighs, nor separation of 
'riends. The troubles of time are all over, and the storms of life 
ire all hushed ; the wounds of disappointment are healed, and the 
.vildest expectancy more than satisfied ; the struggles of nature 
md the warfare with sin are followed by a sweet repose ; and the 
-ears of the mourner are wiped away forever by the hand of the 
i Father, God. 

We are all of us, my friends, of whatever personal belief, we 
I ire all children of the same common Father. Though perhaps not 
i)f the same religious convictions, not of the same form of Christian 
U^orship, nevertheless there is, I trust, in the hearts of all a yearn- 
•ng for the light and grace of God, and a sincere and earnest look- 
, ng for the life to come ; and thus, at last, do we all join hands 
(before the gates of death through which we all must go. 
I 



250 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 



THE WRECK OF RIVERMOUTH. 

John G. ■Whittier. 

Once, in the old Colonial days, 

Two hundred years ago and more, 
A boat sailed down through the Avinding ways 

Of Hampton river to that low shore, 
Full of a goodly company 
Sailing out on the summer sea. 
Veering to catch the land-breeze light. 
With the Boar to left and the Kocks to right. 

In Hampton meadows, where mowers laid 
Their scythes to the swaths of salted grass, 

" Ah, well-a-day ! our hay must be made !" 
A young man sighed, who saw them pass. 

Loud laughed his fellows to see him stand 

AMietting his scythe with a listless hand. 

Hearing a A'oice in a far-off song, 

AA^'atching a white hand beckoning long. 

" Fie on the witch," cried a merry girl. 

As they rounded the point where Goody Cole 

Sat by her door with her wheel atwirl, 
A bent and blear-eyed poor old soul. 

" Oho !" she muttered, " ye're brave to-day ! 

But I hear the little waves laugh and say, 

' The broth will be cold that waits at home ; 

For it's one to go, but another to come I ' " 

" She's cursed," said the skipper ; " speak her fair: 

I'm scary always to see her shake 
Her wicked head, Avitli its wild, gray hair. 

And nose like a hawk, and eves like a snake." 



THE WRECK OF RIVERMOUTH. 251 

But merrily still, with laugh and shout , 
From Hampton river the boat sailed out, 
Till the huts and the flakes on Star seemed nigh, 
And they lost the scent of the pines of Rye. 

They dropped their lines in the lazy tide, 

Drawing up haddock and mottled cod ; 
They saw not the Shadow that walked beside ; 

They heard not the feet with silence shod. 
But thicker and thicker a hot mist grew. 
Shot by the lightnings, through and through ; 
And uiuffled growls, like the growl of a beast, 
Ran along the sky from west to east. 

Then the skipper looked from the darkening sea, 

Up to the dimmed and wading sun ; 
But he spake like a brave man, cheerily, 

" Yet there is time for our homeward run." 
Veering and tacking they backward wore. 
And just as a breath from the woods ashore 
Blew out to whisper of danger past. 
The wrath of the storm came down at last ! 

The skipper hauled at the heavy sail — 

" God be our help !" he only cried. 
As the roaring gale, like the stroke of a flail. 

Smote the boat on its starboard side. 
The Shoalsmen looked, but saw alone 
Dark films of rain-cloud slantwise blown. 
Wild rocks lit up by the lightning's glare, 
The strife and torment of sea and air. 

Suddenly seaward swept the squall ; 

The low sun smoke through cloudy rack ; 
The Shoals stood clear in the light, and all 

The trend of the coast lay hard and black. 



252 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

But far and wide as eye could reach, 
No life Avas seen upon wave or beach ; 
The boat that went out at morning never 
Sailed back again into Hampton river. 

mower, lean on thy bended snath. 

Look from the meadows green and low : 
The wind of the sea is a waft of death. 
The waves are singing a song of woe ! 
By silent river, by moaning sea, 
Long and vain shall thy watching be : 
Never again shall the sweet voice call, 
Never the white hand rise and fall ! 



THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE. 

No. L 

Abram S. Hewitt. 

Two hundred and seventy years ago the good ship Tiger, com- 
manded by Captain Adraien Block, was burned to the water's 
edge as she lay at anchor just off the southern end of Manhattan 
Island. Her crew, thus forced into winter quarters, were the first 
white men Avho built and occupied a house on the land where 
New York now stands; "then," to quote the graphic language of 
Mrs. Lamb, in her history of the city, " in primeval solitude, wait- 
ing till commerce should come and claim its own. Nature wore a 
hardy countenance, as wild and as untamed as the savage land- 
holders. Manhattan's twenty-two thousand acres of rock, lake, 
rolling table-land, rising at places to a height of one hundred and 
thirty-eight feet, were covered with somber forests, grassy knolls, 
and dismal swamps. The trees were lofty ; and old, decayed, and 
withered limbs contrasted with the younger growth of branches ; 
and wild flowers wasted their sweetness among the dead leaves 
and uncut herbage at their roots. The wanton grape-vine swung 



THE BROOELTN BRIDGE. 253 

carelessly from the topmost boughs of the oak and the sycamore ; 
and blackberry and raspberry bushes, like a picket guard, pre- 
sented a bold front in all possible avenues of approach." 

The same sun shines to-day upon the same earth ; yet how 
transformed ! Could there be a more astounding exhibition of the 
power of man to change the face of nature than the panoramic 
view which presents itself to the spectator standing upon the 
crowning arch of the Bridge, whose completion we are here to-day 
to celebrate in the honored presence of the President of the United 
States, with their fifty millions; of the Governor of the State of 
New York, with its five millions ; and of the Mayors of the two 
cities, aggregating over two millions of inlrabitants 1 

In the place of stillness and solitude, the footsteps of these 
millions of human beings ; instead of the smooth waters " unvexed 
by any keel," highways of commerce ablaze with the flags of all 
nations; and where once was the green monotony of forested 
hills, the piled and towering splendors of a vast metropolis, the 
countless homes of industry, the echoing marts of trade, the gor- 
geous palaces of luxury, the silent and steadfast spires of worship ! 

The Brooklyn Bridge stands to-day without a rival among the 
wonders of human skill. It is not the work of any one man or of 
any one age. It is the result of the stud};-, of the' experience, and 
of the knowledge of many men in many ages. It is not merely a 
creation, it is a growth. It stands before us to-day as the sum 
and epitome of human knowledge ; as the very heir of the ages ; 
as the latest glory of centuries of patient observation, profound 
study, and accumulated skill, gained, step by step, in the never- 
ending struggle of man to subdue the forces of nature to his con- 
trol and use. 



254 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE. 

No. 2. 

Seth Low. 

With profound satisfaction in behalf of the City of Brooklyn, 
I accept the completed Bridge. Fourteen times the earth has 
made its great march through the heavens since the work began. 
The vicissitudes of fourteen years have tried the courage and the 
faith of engineers and of people. At last we all rejoice in the 
signal triumph. This beautiful and stately structure fulfils the 
fondest hope. It Avill be a source of pleasure to-day to every 
citizen that no other name is associated with the end than that 
which has directed the work from the beginning — the name of 
Roebling. With all my heart I give to him who bears it now the 
city's acknowledgment and thanks. 

Fourteen years ago a city of four hundred thousand people on 
this side the river heard of a projected suspension bridge with 
incredulity. The span was so long, the height so gi'eat, and the 
enterprise likely to be so costly, that few thought of it as some 
thing begun in earnest. The irresistible demands of Commerce 
enforced these hard conditions. But Science said, "It is possible;" 
and Courage said, "It shall be." 

To-day a city of six hundred thousand people welcomes with 
enthusiasm this wonderful creation of genius. Graceful, and yet 
majestic, it clings to the land like a thing that has taken root. 
Beautiful as a vision of fairy-land, it salutes our sight. Xo one 
who has been upon it can ever forget it. 

This great structure cannot be confined to the limits of local 
pride. The glory of it belongs to the race. Not one shall see it 
and not feel prouder to be a man. And yet it is distinctly an 
American triumph. American genius designed it, American skill 
built it, and American workshops made it. 

And so this Bridge is a wonder of science. But in no less de- 
gTee is it a triumph of faith. I speak not now of the courage of 



THE BIVOUAC OB' THE DEAD. 255 

tliose who projected it. Except for the faith of its builders 
yonder river could not have been spanned by this Bridge. So 
liave the Alps been tunneled in our day, and the ancient prophecy 
has been fulfilled, that faith should remove mountains. 

This Bridge is a land-way over the water, connecting two cities 
bearing to each other relations in some respects similar. It is the 
function of such works to bless "both him that gives and him 
that takes." The development of the West has not belittled, but 
has enlarged New York ; and Brookl}Ti will grow by reason of this 
Bridge, not at New York's expense, but to her permanent advantage. 

The Brooklyn of nineteen hundred can hardly be guessed 
at from the city of to-day. The hand of time is a mighty hand. 
To those who are privileged to live in sight of this noble structure, 
every line of it should be eloquent with inspiration. Courage, 
enterprise, skill, faith, endurance, — these are the qualities which 
have made the great Bridge, and these are the qualities which will 
make our city great and our people great. God grant they may 
never be lacking in our midst. 



THE BIVOTJAC OF THE DEAD. 

Theodore O'Hara. 

The muffled drum's sad roll has beat 

The soldier's last tattoo ! 
No more on life's parade shall meet 

That brave and fallen few ; 
On Fame's eternal camping-ground 

Their silent tents are spread ; 
And Glory guards with silent round 

The bivouac of the dead. 

No rumor of the foe's advance 

Now swells upon the wind ; 
Nor troubled thought at midnight haunts 

Of loved ones left behind : 



256 FRANKLIN SPEAKER, 

No vision, of the warrior's strife 
The warrior's dream alarms ; 
- No braying horn, no screaming fife 
At dawn shall call to arms. 

Their shivered swords are red with rust, 

Their plumed heads are bowed ; 
Their haughty banner, trailed in dust. 

Is now their martial shroud ; 
And plenteous funeral tears have washed 

The red stains from each brow ; 
And the proud forms by battle gashed 

Are free from anguish now. 

The neighing troop, the flashing blade 

The bugle's stirring blast, 
The charge, the dreadful cannonade, 

The din and shout are passed ; 
Nor War's wild notes, nor Glory's peal 

Shall thrill with fierce delight 
Those hearts that never more may feel 

The rapture of the fight. 

Like the fierce northern hurricane 

That sweeps his great plateau, 
Flushed with the triumph yet to gain, 

Came down the serried foe ; 
Who heard the thunder of the fray 

Break o'er the field beneath, 
Knew well the watchword of that day 

Was " Victory or death !" 

Now 'neath their parent turf they rest 

Far from the gory field. 
Borne to a Spartan mother's breast 

On many a bloody shield ; 



HEROISM, 257 

The sunshine of their native sky- 
Smiles sadly on them here, 

And kindred eyes and hearts watch by 
The heroes' sepulchre. 

Rest on, embalmed and sainted dead ! 

Dear is the blood you gave^- 
No impious footsteps here shall tread 

The herbage of your grave. 
Nor shall your glory be forgot 

While Fame her record keeps, 
Or Honor points the hallowed spot 

Where Valor proudly sleeps. 



HEROISM. 

Chatincey M. Depew. 

If we should eliminate from history all its heroism and the 
story of its heroic deeds, how barren would be the record ! The 
national spirit of Great Britain is kept alive to-day by her Marl- 
boroughs, her Wellingtons, and her Xelsons. Rome lives not in 
her empire or in the centuries of her rule, but in the few great 
names, whose deeds have been transmitted for example and en- 
couragement. The ten thousand who at Marathon drove the 
Persian hordes into the sea, lit a fire the spark of which enkin- 
dled the flame which, three thousand years afterwards, expelled the 
Turk from the soil of Greece. 

The barons at Runnymede wrested Magna Charta from King 
John. Magna Charta gave to the- people a representation in the 
House of Commons. The House of Commons created Pym, 
Hampden, Sydney, and Cromwell. The spirit of these men pro- 
duced the American Revolution. 

The shot which the "embattled farmer" fired at Lexington 
"echoed around the world," and produced most of the revolutions 



258 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

in all lands in Avliich, in the last liimdred years, power has fallen 
away from the throne, and been gained by the people. It was the 
echo of that shot which, in 1861, aroused the national spirit to the 
protection of the national life ; and while Lexington founded the 
Kepublic, the memory of Lexington preserved it. 

On this Decoration Day we can without criticism and without 
animosity recount the heroic deeds, and fight over the battles of 
the Great Rebellion. We can wdth the old fire and fervor sweep 
with Sherman in his march to the sea; stand by the grand 
Thomas wdiile he is holding the enemy at bay ; be w^ith the chiv- 
alric McPherson as he falls at the front ; fight in the clouds on 
Lookout ISIountain with gallant Joe Hooker ; follow that wonder- 
ful ride down the valley to Winchester, when the heroic Sheridan 
on foaming steed reformed his flying squadrons, and plucked vic- 
tory from defeat ; sit with Farragut in the shrouds of his flag-ship 
at Mobile Bay ; and look on that noblest of historical groupings, 
when Lee surrendered his sword to Grant. 

And then we can reverently thank God for the results of the 
war and the blessings of peace. The husbandman gathers from 
the old battle fields abundant harvests. Nature has covered with 
tree and vine and flower and shrub all the places made desojate 
by the torch, the bursting shell, the contending combatants, the 
trampling armies. As the verdure covers and hides embrasure 
and earthwork, the rifle-pit and the unmarked grave, so time has 
allayed the passions, and buried the animosities of the strife, and 
to-day our glorious flag floats over a free, a prosperous, a united 
people. 



GREAT BRITAIN AND HER AMERICAN COLONIES. 

George Bancroft. 

In attempting to coerce her American colonies, Great Britain, 
allured by a phantom of absolute authority, made war on human 
freedom. The liberties of Poland had been sequestered, and its 



ADDRESS AT GETTYSBURG. 259 

territory began to be parceled out among the usurpers. The aris- 
tocratic privileges of Sweden had been swept away by treachery 
and usurpation. The free towns of Germany, which had preserved 
in that empire the example of republics, were "like so many 
dying sparks that go out one after another." 

Venice and Genoa had stifled the spirit of independence in 
their prodigal luxury. Holland was ruinously divided against 
itself. In Great Britain the House of Commons had become so 
venal, that it might be asked, whether a body so chosen and so 
influenced was fit to exercise legislative power ^vithin the realm. 
If it shall succeed in establishing by force of arms its boundless 
authority over America, where shall humanity tind an asylum ? 

But this decay of the old forms of liberty was the symptom and 
the forerunner of a new creation. The knell of the ages of servi- 
tude and inequality was rung ; those of equality and brotherhood 
were to dawn. 

As the fleets and armies of England w^ent forth to consolidate 
arbitrary power, the sound of war everywhere else on the earth 
died away. Kings sat still in awe, and nations turned to watch 
the issue. 



ADDRESS AT GETTY SBXJRa. 

Abraham Lincoln. 

Fourscore and seven years ago oui fathers brought forth upon 
this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated 
to the proposition that all men are created equal. !N"ow we are 
engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any 
nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met 
to dedicate a portion of it as the final resting-place of those who 
here gave their lives that that nation might live. 

It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But 
in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we 
cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who 



260 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

struggled here, have consecrated it far above our power to add or 
detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we 
say here, but it can never forget what they did here. 

It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the un- 
finished work they have thus far so nobly carried on. It is rather 
for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, 
that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to the 
cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion ; that 
we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in 
vain, that the nation shall, under God, have a ne^v birth of free- 
dom, and that the government of the people, by the people, and 
for the people, shall not perish from the earth. 



THE DELIVERANCE OF LEYDEN. 

Charles F. Richardson. 

Long, long the Lord His counsel keeps, 

And long withholds His hand. 
While weary weeks and months go by, 

And sad-eyed watchers stand ; 
But not in vain their yearning gaze 

Deliverance awaits : 
The winds and waves obey His will — 

The ships are at the gates ! 

Oh, fair at first old Leyden lay 

Upon the ancient Rhine, 
Whose willow -shaded waters mirrored 

All the lordly line 
Of bridge and boat and soaring spire, 

Proud home and crowded street, 
And, far above the Roman tower, 

The blue sky smiling sweet. 



THE DELIVERANCE OF LETDEN. 261 

But all that fatal summer Ley den 

Languished in the grasp 
Of the stern and haughty Valdez 

Ever tightening clasp on clasp ; 
All about her frowned his ramparts, 

Scowled his cannon, thronged his men, 
ton heel on fruitful garden. 

Spanish steed on Holland fen. 

Within the walls the burghers' store 

Still faded day by day ; 
Two months with food, another month 

Without, had passed away ; 
Their meat and then their bread had gone, 

And every hope had failed. 
Save a four days' hoard of malt cake, 

And hearts that never quailed. 

In darkness walks the pestilence, 

Destruction Avastes at noon, 
In every house there lies one dead ; 

All fear to follow soon ; 
Starvation leers from many an eye, 

And famine sucks the breath 
Of tottering wife and dying cliild, 

And bero marked for death. 

One only ho]:)e, one strong ally, 

For dying Leyden waits : 
The Prince's hand may yet command 

The massive ocean gates. 
The dikes ! the outer dikes ! he breaks 

Their walls, and bids the sea 
Go drown the camps of Valdez, 

And the captive city free. 



9,(j2 FBANKLI2Y SPEAKER. 

Two hundred boats he fills with food ; 

The waters slowly rise ; 
And joyfully and longingly 

Men watch the western skies. 
The swarming troops of Yaldez 

Fear a more than human powder, 
As they, see the crawling waters 

Stealing upward every hour. 

And now the mighty winds of God 

Spring fiercely from the sky ; 
O'er moor and dyke, on surging wave, 

The eager fleet rides high. 
At midnight, in the tempest 

And the terror of the sea, 
Half-drowned, beneath the blood-stained tide. 

The stricken Spaniards flee. 

Long, long the Lord His counsel keeps. 

And long withholds His hand, 
While weary weeks and months go by, 

And sad-eyed watchers stand ; 
But not in vain their yearning gaze 

Deliverance awaits ; 
The winds and waves obey His will — 

The boats are at the gates ! 



NATIONAL GREATNESS. 

Lord Coleridge. 

In human affairs men are the great factors of results ; and men 
are great, not in proportion to the largeness, but in proportion to 
the smallness, of their natural advantages. 



NATIONAL GREATNESS. 263 

Size appears to me to be a commonplace incident in the history 
of a nation. Athens, Rome, Holland, England, — all of these are 
places and powers that have affected the destinies of mankind ; 
but every one of these began from very small beginnings, and 
every one of them had but little of the earth's surface to stand 
upon — nay, one of them had to conquer from the ocean something 
upon which to place her foot. 

Then, after all, let me say about this matter of size : You did 
not make it, you were as large when the wild Indian roamed your 
woods or hunted your prairies; you were as large when that strange 
and mysterious people, who were before the Indians, ruled over 
the land with a civilization which has left just as remarkable evi- 
dences from Lake Superior to ^orth Carolina. 

You were as great before that, when your huge lakes glittered 
in the sun, or rushed in the wind, with nothing but an occasional 
mammoth or bison to look upon the glory of their strength. 

For my part, as I have said before, it is not the size of a nation, 
but it is the products of a nation, that are to be looked at, when 
you consider whether a nation is admirable or not. 

Your population is vast, but where does it come from 1 You — 
you are at present the receptacle of the immigration of the world. 
You, and not I, are the best judge how far this enormous immi- 
gration is an unmixed good. You, and not I, are the best judge 
how far the integrity of your political institutions is, or is not, 
favorably affected by it. 

Let me say in conclusion upon this matter, that it is not size, it 

'' is not force, it is not strength, which constitute true greatness. But 

when men rise against oppression ; when good, honest, simple. 

God-fearing citizens go to war, plunge into fierce battle, sooner 

than suffer the disruption of their country ; when they fight their 

I battles, not with mercenary armies,, but with their own best blood 

and with their children's blood ; when they say that what is good 

I for themselves is good for others too ; that so far as their power 

I and dominion exist, every man, whatever be his race, whatever 



264: FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

be his origin, whatever be his color, shall be as free as they are 
themselves ; when they say that throughout the length and breadth 
of their country there shall be no traffic in human blood ; nay, 
further, when they try to do justice to every man, when they 
respect them, when they endeavor to be high-minded and mag- 
nanimous toward them ; nay, further, when they are not afraid 
nor ashamed to atone for mistakes and errors ; — then, I say, that 
such men, and the nation that such men make, are truly, nobly, 
indisputably great. 



NEW YORK. 

Grover Cleveland. 

The State of New York is not alone a vast area — though it 
includes within its borders more territory than seven of the original 
thirteen States combined, beautifully diversified with mountains 
and valleys, streams and lakes, forests and fertile fields. The 
State is not alone a busy workshop, with its continuous hum of 
machinery and its army of artisans and workmen — though its 
manufactures far exceed in worth, variety, and volume any other 
State or Territory, and though their value is more than the aggre- 
gate produced in ten of the thirteen original States. The State is 
not alone a pathway of commerce and a center of trade — though 
our waterways and railroads transport a nation's wealth, and though 
our metropolis rivals the money centers of the world, and is a 
distributing point for all lands. The State is not alone an im- 
mense aggregation of people — though its population exceeds that 
of any sister State, amounting to more than one-tenth of that of 
all the States and Territories, and nearly equals that of eight of 
the original States. Xor do all these things combined make up 
the State which we delight to call our own. Our cities busy, 
thrifty, and prosperous, are constantly increasing in population and 
wealth and in tlie me^s to furnish to their people all that per- 
tains to refinement and civilization. Our villages, quiet, contented, 



i 



CIVILIZATION AND LABOR, 265 

I and orderly, are scattered everywhere, and by their growth and 
enterprise give proof of proper and economical management. Our 
many colleges, seminaries, and common schools are evidences of the 
interest of the people in popular and thorough education. Our numer- 
ous charitable institutions attest the care of the State for its unfor- 
tunate poor. Our churches and the tolerant and almost universal 
observance of religious duties by every sect and creed teach obe- 
idience to the law, and prepare our people for good citizenship. 
Our soldiery, well disciplined and equipped, stand ready to defend 
our homes, while they beget a martial spirit and patriotic senti- 
ment. A wase and firm administration of the laws by our courts 
I gives no occasion for disorders and outbreaks that might arise from 
the miscarriage of justice. Surely, we have enough to cause us to 
congratulate ourselves upon the claim we have to State citizenship. 
And yet, I cannot forget how much the continuance of all 
that makes us proud to-day depends upon the watchfulness 
and independence of the people, and their effective participation 
and interest in State affairs. With a bad government, notwith- 
standing all our advantages, our State will not be great. Eem em- 
ber that the government of the State was made for the people, and 
see to it that it be hy the people. A sturdy independence and a 
determination to hold public servants to a strict accountability, 
will teach them to keep*well in view the lines between the people's 
interests and a narrow^ and selfish partisanship. And I am sure 
that a man, after faithful service in official place, reaps no mean 
reward if, at the end, he shall retire with the confidence and affec- 
tion of a thoughtful and intelligent community, retaining still the 
proud title of a citizen of the Empire State. 



CIVILIZATION AND LABOR. 

Ellis H. Roberts. 

Civilization, which has stricken down caste, has lifted up the 
laborer. Science has adopted him as its ally and heir. With his 
hand on the valve of the locomotive, the engineer holds traffic 



266 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

subject to his will. At the telegraph instrument, the operator 
takes part in the councils of capital and state-craft. The master of 
the machinery, in factory and press-room, ceases to be a servant, 
and increases his personal value by every horse-power which he 
controls. 

Thus it results that the tournament of the world has changed 
its fields and its weapons. Men no longer strive with lance for a 
lady's favors. They struggle with matter to change its forms and 
add to its value. He who can render industry more varied or 
more efficient, who can turn any element or gift of nature to world 
use, is the winner of the prize. 

The world has not outgroT\Ti its demand for soldiers, and per- 
haps it never may. But they are not now the only favorites of 
fortune and of mankind. Society will not dispense with profes- 
sional men, although they do not stand so far above the level as 
in centuries ago. We shall call upon lawyers when we get into 
strife over property, and they are necessary to the social structure 
which protects the person. While sickness comes, doctors will 
maintain their calling. So long as there is a soul which longs for 
immortality, clergpnen will be welcome in home and pulpit. 

But with expanding industries, with developing science, new 
professions have gained favor. Commerce has its spheres in which 
high training and strong intellects are needed, and are well 
rewarded. So has the varied mechanism of tliis age. 

In the professions, hundreds are starving in this country, in the 
foolish pride of a decayed caste. In the walks of production, 
wealth invites every man who will bring brains and industry, 
which will win skill. The salaries which are, on the average, 
highest in this country to-day, are those of skilled mechanics, and 
especially those who are competent to adD}inister large establish- 
ments. Add experience and judgment to science and trained 
skill, and furnace and factory, mine and mill, enterprise in varied 
forms, will proffer compensation dependent only upon ability and 
fidelity. 



LIBERTY. 267 



LIBERTY. 

Henry George. 

We honor Liberty in name and in form. We set np her statues, 
and sound her praises. But we have not fully trusted her. And 
with our growth, so grow her demands. She will have no half 
service ! 

They who look upon Liberty as having accomplished her own 

mission when she has abolished hereditary privileges, and given 

men the ballot, who think of her as having no further relations to 

j the every-day affairs of life, have not seen her real grandeur : to 

j them the poets who have sung of her must seem rhapsodists, and 

i her martyrs fools ! 

We speak of Liberty as one thing, and virtue, wealth, knowl- 
edge, invention, national strength, and national independence as 
other things. But of all these Liberty is the source, the mother, 
the necessary condition. She is to virtue what light is to color ; 
to wealth, what sunshine is to grain ; to knowledge, what eyes are 
to sight. She is the genius of invention, the brawn of national 
strength, the spirit of national independence. Where Liberty 
rises, there virtue grov/s, wealth increases, knowledge expands, 
invention multiplies human powers, and in strength and spirit 
the freer nation rises among her neighbors as Saul amid his brethren 
— taller and fairer. "VNHiere Liberty sinks, there virtue fades, 
wealth diminishes, knowledge is forgotten, invention ceases, and 
empires once mighty in arms and arts become a helpless prey to 
freer barbarians ! 

Liberty came to a race of slaves crouching under Egyptian 
whips, and led them forth from the house of bondage. She hard- 
ened them in the desert, and made of them a race of conquerors. 
The free spirit of the Mosaic law took their thinkers up to heights 
where they beheld the unity of God, and inspired their poets with 
strains that yet phrase the highest exaltations of thought. 

Liberty dawned on the Phoenician coast, and ships passed the 



268 FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 

Pillars of Hercules to plough, the unknown sea. She shed a par- 
tial light on Greece ; and marble greAv to shapes of ideal beauty, 
words became the instruments of subtlest thought, and against 
the scanty militia of free cities the countless hosts of the Great 
King broke like surges against a rock. 

She cast her beams on the four-acre farms of Italian husband- 
men ; and, born of her strength, a power came forth that conquered 
the world. They glinted from shields of German warriors, and 
Augustus wept for his legions. Out of the night that followed 
her eclipse, her slanting rays fell again on free cities : and a lost 
learning revived, modern civilization began, a new world was 
unveiled — ^and as Liberty grew, so grew art, wealth, power, knowl- 
edge, and refinement. 

In the liistory of every nation we may read the same truth. It 
was the strength born of Magna Charta that won Crecy and Agin- 
court. It was the revival of Liberty from the despotism of the 
Tudors that glorified the Elizabethan age. It was the spirit which 
brought a crowned tyi*ant to the block that planted here the seed 
of the mighty tree of Freedom. M 



THE ORATORY OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

H. W. Beecher, 

A FEW days ago, standing upon the steps of the Parker House, 
in Boston, my attention was arrested by a procession. I saw a 
soldierly body of colored men, with muskets and swords reversed, 
with silent band intermediate, with officers' corps behind it ; and 
then the carriage that bore, dust to dust, all that remained on 
earth of Wendell Phillips. 

You remember when Lovejoy was infamously slaughtered by a 
mob in Alton — blood that has been the seed of liberty all over the 
land — you remember how Faneuil Hall was granted to call a 
public meeting to express itself on the murder?^ The meeting was 
made up largely of rowdies. They meant to overawe and put 



THE ORATORY OF WENDELL PHILLIPS. 209 

down all other expressions of opinion except those that rioted 
with the rioters. Wendell Phillips, fired with their infamy, and 
feeling called of God in his soul, went upon the platform. This 
was the beginning of his career as an orator. Practically unknown 
when the sun went down one day ; when it rose next morning, all 
Boston was saying — "Who is this fellow? Who is this Phillips?" 
— a question that has never been asked since. 

The power to discern right amid all the Avrappings of interest 
and all the seductions of ambition, was his genius and his glory. 
Mr. Phillips was not called upon to be a universal orator, any 
more than he was to be a universal thinker. In literature and in 
history widely read, in person magnificent, in manners most accom- 
plished, in voice clear and silvery, he was not a man of tempests, 
he was not an orchestra of an hundred instruments, he was not an 
organ, mighty and complex. 

The Nation slept; and God wanted a trumpet, sharp, wide- 
sounding, narrow, and intense ; and that was Mr. Phillips. His 
eloquence was penetrating and alarming. He did not flow as a 
mighty Gulf-stream ; he did not dash upon this continent as the 
ocean does ; he Avas not a mighty rushing river. His eloquence 
Avas a flight of arrows — sentence after sentence polished and most 
of them burning. He slung them one after the other ; and where 
they struck they slew — always elegant, always awful. 

He belongs to the race of giants, not simply because he was in 
and of himself a great soul, but because he bathed in the provi- 
dence of God, and came forth mighty. When pigmies are all dead, 
the noble countenance of Wendell Phillips will still look forth 
radiant as a risincr sun — a sun that will never set. 



4 



APPEN^DIX. 



WORDS OFTEN MISPRONOUNCED. 



KEY TO PRONUNCIATION. 

iite, eve, ice, ode, use, try, at, let, it, on, up, city, last, art, all, fare, her, 
son, do, for, pull, rude, -ean, (jell, gem, get, lia§, thin, this, ph=f , qu=kw, 
ii=French u, intermediate between oo and ee. 



A-e -eli'mate. 

A -eross', not krawst. 

Ad dress', not ad' dress 

A dept', not ad'ept. 

Ad'mi ra ble, not mi. 

A dult', not ad'ult. 

A gain, a gen'. 

A ghast', not a. . 

Ag'gran dize. 

Al'co ho], not h&wl. 

Al'ge brJi, not bra. 

A las, not a. 

Alms, ilmz. 

Al'ter nate, not all. 

Am a teur', not am' a toor. 

Ancient, an'shent. 

Answer, iin'ser. 

Apostle, a pos'l. 

Ap pa ra'tus. 

Ar'ab, not a'rab. 

Ar-eh'i tect, not arch. 

Ar-eh'i trave. 

Ar-e'tic, not ar'tic. 

Ar'dii ous. 

A ris'to -crat. 

Ar is toc'ra cy. 

Ar row, not ar row. 



As pir'ant, not as'pi rant. 

A sy' lum. 

At tor'ney, tur not tor. 

Az'ure. 

Bade, not bade. 

Balm, bam, not bam. 

Bar'rel, not bar'rel. 

Bastile, bas tel'. 

Been, bin. 

Be cause', not cos. 

Be half, be haf . 

Be queath.', not th. 

Bias' phe mous. 

Bla' tant. 

Bomb, bum, not bom. 

Bom' bast, not bom. 

Bou quet, boo ka'. 

Bra va'do, not va. 

Breth ren, not breth'er en. 

Brew, brdo, not brii. 

Buoyant, bwoi'ant. 

Calf, -eaf, not -eaf. 

Cal' lous, -eal'us. 

Calm, cam. 

Ca nine', not ca'nine. 

Can't, not cant. 

Car' bine. 



2TZ 



FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 



Cem'e ter v, not try. 

Chasm, kagm, not kas'um. 

Chasten, chas'n, not ten. 

Clias'tlge ment. 

Gha teau, sha to'. 

Clean' ly (adj.), not clean ly. 

Com' bat ant. 

Come ly, not come ly. 

Com'mu nist. 

Con'quer, ker. 

Con'strue, stroo. 

Con trib'ute. 

Coterie, ko te re'. 

Coar i er, koo' rl er. 

Court e ous, kurt'e us. 

Cuir as sier, kwe ras ser'. 

Cu'po la, not lo. 

Daunt less, not dant. 

Deaf, not deaf. 

Be bns, da bre'. 

De cease'. 

Def'i ?it, not de ficj'it. 

Di'a mond, not di'mond. 

Dis'pu ta ble. 

Dig §olve', not dis boIv'. 

Does, duz. 

Doth, 7iot doth. 

Draught, draft. 

Duc'at. 

Elm, not el'um. 

En'gine, not gine. 

Er rand, 7iot er rand. 

Ev'er f, not ev ry. 

Ex haust, egz hawst'. 

Ex'tra, not tra. 

Extraordinary, eks trSr'di na ry. 

Fa(j ade'. 

Fer tile, not tile. 

FI nance', 7iot fi'nance. 

Flaunt' ing, not aw. 

Flor'id, not flau'rid. 

Forge, not f6rg. 



Fount ain, fount' in. 

Frag' lie. 

Gal' lant, not yant. 

Gaunt, not aw. 

Ghast ly not a. 

Glacier, glas' i er. 

Gov'ern ment, not er. 

Grl mace', not grim' ace. 

GrI'my, not grim y. 

Half, not haf. 

Har'ass, not ha ras'. 

Haunt, hant. 

Hearth, hiirtli, not hurth. 

Hei nous, ha'nus. 

Her'o ine, not ine. 

Her'o i§m, not he ro ism. 

Hid'e ous. 

Hom'age, not 6m' age. 

Hor'rid, not hau'rid. 

Hos'tlle, not has' til. 

Ho rl' zon. 

Hum' ble. 

Hu'mor, not u'mor. 

Hurrah, hoor ra. 

Hy'gi ene. 

Ig no ra'mus. 

n lus'trate. 

Im brue', im broo'. 

In'dl an. 

In dis'pu ta ble. 

In qui'ry, not en'qui ry. 

Iron, i'urn. 

Is'o late, not i'so late. 

Jostle, jos'l. 

Jour nal ism, jur'nal ism. 

Joust, just. 

Ju've nile, not nil. 

Laugh, laf , not laf . 

Launch, liinch. 

Leg'end. 

Lei sure, le'zhur. 

Le thar'gic. 



f 



WORDS OFTEN MISPRONOUNCED. 



273 



Listen, lis'n, not ten. 

hj qe'um. 

Mar'i time, not time. 

Ma'trix, not mat'rix. 

Mas'sa cre {e silent). 

Ma'tron, not a. 

Memoir, mem'wor. 

Men' ace. 

Ml nute'ly. 

Mis'chie vous. 

Na'lion al. 

None, nun. 

Noth' ing, not noth ing. 

Of fal, not aw'fal. 

Often, of n, not ten. 

Of 'fige, not aw'fis. 

Of 'fi cer, not aw' fi cer. 

Once, wons, not wunst. 

On'er ous, not 6 nor ous. 

Op po'nent, not op'po nent 

Palms, piimz. 

Par'ent. 

Pjitli, not path. 

Pa'tri ot. 

Pa'tron. 

Per'fect (verb and noun). 

Pie be'ian, not ple'bi an. 

Pon' iard, not poin'yard. 

Po§ §3ss', not po sess'. 

Prefer a ble. 

Pre tense', not pre'tense. 

Prod'tice, not pro'duce. 

Prog'ress (noun), not pro'gress. 

Proph'e cy, not cy. 

Psalm, not sam. 

Realms, not reFums. 

Res'pite, not res'pite. 

Roiled, not riled. 

Ro mance', not ro'mance. 

Rude, not rude. 

Ruffian, ruf yan. 

Rule, not riile. 



Sam'son, not samp'son. 

Sergeant, sar' gent. 

Shriek, not srek. 

Shrill, not sril. 

Shrine, not siine. 

Sbriv'el ed, not sriv. 

Soften, sof n. 

Sol'ace, not so' lace. 

Sov'er eign, not sov. 

Stanch, not a or a. 

Stra te'gic. 

Stu'dent, not stoo. 

Stu'pid, not stoo. 

Sub diie', not doo. 

Suf fice', fize. 

Sul'phur ous. 

Swamp, swomp. 

Sword, sdrd. 

Syr'up, not sur up. 

Tas'sel. 

Taunt, tant. 

Threw, throo. 

Tour'na ment, tur'na ment. 

Toward, not to ward'. 

Treb'le, {e silent). 

Trlb'tine, not tri'bune. 

True, troo, not tru. 

Truths, not truths. 

Ttiue, not toon. 

Un daunt' ed. 

Ve'he mence, not ve he'mence. 

Vi'o let, not voi'let. 

Vi'rile. 

War'ri or. 

What, hwot. 

Wheat, hwet. 

When, hwen. 

Where, hwar. 

Which, hwich. 

Wont, not wunt. 

Yon' der. 

Zo ol'o gy, not zoo. 



PROPER NOUNS AND ADJECTIVES. 



FOR KEY TO PRONUNCIATION SEE PAGE 271. 



Ab'di el. 

A crop'o lis. 

Ad i ron'dack. 

Ad'ri at'ic, not a'dri. 

A'dre an. 

M ge an, e ge'an. 

Ag a mem'uon. 

Ag'in court. 

Ag rip pi'na. 

Al le gha'nies. 

Al sa'ti an, sM an. 

A'mal. 

Am bro'si us, shi us. 

An drom' e da. 

Angelo, an' ja lo. 

Anglesea, aug'gl se. 

Angouleme, on goo lem'. 

An'JQu. 

Ap'en nine§. 

Ar'gos. 

Arnaud, ar no'. 

Ar be' la. 

Ar' gyle. 

Asia, a'sM a, not zhia. 

Ath'eng. 

Atb'os. 

At' ti la. 

Au gus'tan. 

A var'. 

Bal a kla'va. 

Beauvais, bo va'. 



Berk' shire, sheer. 

Blen ner has'set. 

Blind. 

Bliicher, bloo'ker. 

Bologna, bo lon'ya. 

Boulogne, boo Ion'. 

Brienz, bre entz'. 

Bri tan'ni cus. 

Brougham, broo'am. 

Brunelleschi, broo nel les'kee. 

Bui ga'rl an. 

Bur goyne'. 

By zan'tine. 

Ca lig'u la. 

Cam' bridge. 

Cambronne, kon bron'. 

Cam pa'ni a. 

Cap'i to line. 

Car lyle', nx)t car'. 

Carnot, kar no'. 

Cafe gat. 

Cat'i line. 

Cer'dic. 

Champeaux, shon po'. 

Charpentier, shiir pon te a'. 

Chick a mau'ga. 

Choate, chot. 

CiQ'e ro. 

Ci thae'ron. 

Clau'di us. 

Co' loo^ne, CO Iju'. 



I 



■ 



PROPER NOUNS AND ADJECTIVES, 



275 



Con'stan tine. 

Co per'ni cus. 

Cor'co ran. 

Corn wal' lis. 

Correggio, kor red' jo. 

Cor'si ca. 

Couture, koo teer'. 

Cre'cy, kres'se. 

Curtius, cur'shi us. 

Custozza, coos totsa. 

■Cym'ri an. 

Da nu' bi an. 

Dartmouth, dart'muth. 

Derphl. 

De mos'the nes. 

Dessaix, deli sa'. 

Di a'nii. 

Dietrich, de'trick, 

Di o cle'ti an, ti = shi. 

Disraeli, diz ra'le. 

Don'el son. 

Don gan'non, 

Drii'sus. 

Dli viiV. 

Diimouriez, dii moo re a'. 

Edinburgh, ed' in bur rah. 

Em py re'an. 

E phe'si an, si = shi. 

E ry'ri. 

Eylau, i' low. 

Fan'eu il. 

Far'ra gut. 

Faust, fowst. 

Fon te noy'. 

Fitz wal'ter. 

Fu lii'no. 

Gal' i lee. 

Gal i le'o 

Gen'o a. 

Geth sem'a ne. 

Glau'cus. 

Go li'ath. 



Goujon, goo zhon'. 

Grouchy, groo'she. 

Gua te mo'zin. 

Guise, gwez. 

Gus'tav. 

Gat'en berg. 

Hengist, heng' gist. 

Her'cu leg. 

Hessian, hesh'an. 

Hochkirchen, hok ker' ken. 

Hoi' stein. 

Hou' go mont, mong. 

Hy pa' ti a, shi a. 

I«h a bod. 

In val i des', des=da. 

I o'ni an. 

Italian, i tal'yan. 

Iroquois, ir o kwoy'. 

Ish'nia el ites. 

Jena, ya'nii. 

Jo'se phine, feen. 

Kan'gas. 

Kas kas'ki a. 

Kel'ler man. 

Kearney, kiir'ne. 

La? e dse mo'ni ans. 

Lannes, Ian. 

Latour d'Auvergne, la toor'do vem.' 

Le Clerc, leh clair'. 

Leipsic, lip sic. 

Le on'i das. 

Le pan to. 

Leydeu, ll'den. 

Lis'sii. 

Lie wel'lyn. 

Lodi, lo'dee. 

Loire, Iwar. 

Lom'bar dy. 

Louisiana, loo e ze a'na. 

Lou vre {e silent). 

Lut'zen. 

Lyd'i an. 



276 



FRANKLIN SPEAKER. 



Ly'ra. 

Maes Gar'mon, maze. 

Mag'de burg. 

Ma gen'ta. 

Magna €har'ta. 

Mala koff. 

Mai vine', veen. 

Man'i ton. 

Mar'a tlion. 

Ma ren go. 

Mar' i on. 

Marl' bor ongli, bur ro. 

Marseillaise, mar sal yaz'. 

Mas, ma. 

Man mee'. 

Meagher, ma' her. 

Med i ter ra'ne an. 

Meg'a ra. 

Melas, ma' las. 

Mem'pliis. 

Metz. 

Mi ner'va. 

Mirabeau, mir'a bo. 

Mo bile', beel. 

Mont Blanc, mow blon'. 

Mon tank'. 

Mor'ny. 

Mos'cow. 

Mo gelle'. 

Mu'ni-eb. 

Murat, mil ra'. 

Muskingum, mus king'gum. 

Nilse by. 

Oeil de Boeuf (il de bef). 

Odin. 

haiu'. 

O lym' pus. 

Orange, not au'raDge. 

O rl'on. 

O ris' ka nv. 

Pal'a tine. 

Pal es tine. 



Pa o' 11. 

Par'the non. 

Per i cleg. 

Persia, per'shi a. 

Persigny, per sen'je. 

Pestb, pest. 

Pliaraob, fa'ro. 

Phoe ni'ci an, sbi an. 

Pier pont. 

Pla tse'a. 

Plu'tar-eli. 

Pleiades, ple'ya dez. 

Pompeii, pom pay ye. 

Por'phy ry. 

Pro me'tbeus. 

Prussian, prush i an. 

Pyra. 

Pyr'e nee§. 

Quincy, quin'zy. 

Ra'mon. 

Ra'mus. 

Ra'plia el. 

Re dan'. 

Ro'man off. 

Roeb ling, Ro'bling. 

Rouen, roo'en. 

Rouget de Lisle, roo zhii'deh lei'. 

Run'ny mede. 

Russia, rusli'i a. 

Sa dow' a. 

St. Germain I'Auxerrois, san zber 

man' loz'er wa. 
St. Joux, zhoo. 
Sa man'. 
Siir diu'i an. 
Sa rene', reen. 
Sa ron' ic. 
Sas'sen a-eh. 
Scbleswig, sles'wig. 
Scytb'i an. 
Se bas to pol. 
Se dan'. 



r 



PROPER NOUNS AND ADJECTIVES. 



277 



Seine, san. 

Sem'pa-eh. 

Shen an do'ali. 

Shr loh. 

Si er'ra. 

Si le'si a. 

Slav. 

Slii'nar. 

SI cil' i an. 

Soc'ra te§. 

Solferino, sol fa ree'no. 

Stow'ell. 

Strag'burg, 

Sus que ban'na. 

S/r i an, 

Tavannes, ta van'. 

Ten ton'ic. 

Tewksbury, Itiks'ber e. 

Thames, temz. 

Ther mop'y Ise. 

Ti be'ri as. 

Tip per a'ry. 

Ton raine.' 

Tours, toor. 

Toussaint L'Ouverture, too'san'loo 

ver tiir. 
Tra fal'gar. 
Twyn.* 



Ty'barn. 

Ty'-elio Brahe, {he silent). 

U'ther. 

V&l dez. 

Val bar la. 

Ven'iQe. 

Versailles, ver salz'. 

Ve su'vl us. 

Vosges, vozb. 

Wallenstein, wol'len stln 

War'ris toun. 

War wick, wor ick. 

Wa' ter loo. 

Welling ton. 

Win'ches ter. 

Winkelried, wink'el reet. 

Woolvritcb, wool'itcli. 

Worcester, woos'ter. 

Wulf. 

Xerxes, zerx'es. 

FOREIGN PHKASES. 

A've Caesar Im per'a tor. 

Da Ca' po, 

Glo'ri a in ex cel'sis. 

Tete d'armee, tate dar ma'. 

Vive TEmpereur, vev long'peh rur. 



* John Twyn— executed in London in 1663 for printing without a license. 



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